If the BJP strategy goes as per the script it may be able to browbeat the Congress and salvage at least a part of the monsoon session without any of its three top leaders – External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje and Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chauhan – having to resign.
The BJP’s floor managers have adopted a multi-pronged strategy to divide the Opposition, rake up scams in Congress-ruled states and sharpen their attack on the party’s first family by targeting Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra.
The avoidable spectacle will only rob the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of their aura of being a party and PM with a difference. Even if BJP manages to cow down the Congress, the Pyrrhic victory will do little to enhance Modi’s clean image. In the larger context, what matters is public perception. Congress, when in power, acted in a similar brazen manner and paid for it.