Chennai: Time and again, many national and regional leaders who would not toe the line of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty were humiliated and the Congress party became the sole property of one family, said Union Minister Prakash Javadekar.
“Be it Morarji Desai, K Kamaraj, Atulya Ghosh, Charan Singh, Devi Lal, Babu Jagjivan Ram, such people were pushed aside to make way for one family rule over the party which eventually made way for an attempt at one party rule over the country,” he said.
“The hunger for concentration of power has ingrained a disdain in the Nehru-Gandhi family for other democratically elected leaders. When Congress governments were at the Centre, President’s Rule was imposed on states a staggering 80 plus times. A corollary of this meant that Raj Bhavans were used as defacto Congress party headquarters. This has happened even as recently as the UPA era,” he said in an article.
Even at the Centre, the Congress has always had a ‘power behind the throne approach’ which did not allow a single coalition government that had their ‘outside support’ to finish its term, added Javadekar.
According to him, key differences between the authoritarian, power-hungry instincts of the Congress and the democratic outlook of anti-Congress forces should not be forgotten.