With Ghulam Nabi Azad retiring from the Rajya Sabha, and the Congress in no mood to bring him back to the upper house of India’s parliament, many have been wondering as to who the leader of opposition in the Rajya Sabha will now be. The Gandhi family does not trust many party stalwarts these days, and only a few of the party leaders continue to be in the good books of Sonia-Rahul-Priyanka Gandhi. One such leader is the ever-subservient and thankful Mallikarjun Kharge. Kharge is now all set to assume the role of leader of opposition in the Rajya Sabha.
Mallikarjun Kharge had played the same role in the Lok Sabha from 2014 to 2019. In 2019, however, Kharge lost his bid to re-enter the Lok Sabha, as he suffered a humiliating defeat during the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. For the Congress party to repose its trust in losers is no surprise. It is not particularly new for the Grand Old Party to gift leaders with all-important posts after they prove to be monumental failures, Rahul Gandhi being case-in-point.
Kharge is known to be a man who has the incredible ability to derail the smooth functioning of parliament. We all have seen scenes of the man spearheading shouting matches in the lower house from 2014 to 2019. Kharge was the mind and soul behind such regular and chaotic disruptions of the Lok Sabha proceedings. For him to be deployed by the Congress to fill the shoes of Ghulam Nabi Azad is a clear indication of the times to come. The Rajya Sabha too, will be subjected to frequent, mindless and chaotic disruptions.
Ghulam Nabi Azad was largely successful in letting meaningful debates take place in the Rajya Sabha. By his own admission, the strategy of the Congress in the Rajya Sabha under him was to create ruckus for a day or two at the most, and then allow debate and other parliamentary functions to go on as scheduled. Such a calculated strategy will most definitely not come to the upper house in the form of Mallikarjun Kharge, who is infamous for making ridiculous statements, and then blaming it on his poor comprehension of Hindi.
However, there is no other man the Congress would rather have as the leader of opposition in the Rajya Sabha. Kharge is a Gandhi loyalist, and that is a prerequisite for any leader to climb the hierarchical ladder within the party, short of its Presidency. Over the years, one personality trait of Mallikarjun Kharge which has made him the blue-eyed boy of the Gandhis is his non-negotiable loyalty to the family. It is in return of the same loyalty and subservience that he has now been deployed to lower the stature of the Rajya Sabha.