Rahul's Hyderabad protest casts shadow over Budget session

The Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs will meet on February 4 to decide the Budget session schedule. Venkaiah Naidu says the government is willing to advance the session if the Opposition agrees.
Archis Mohan reports.

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid his respects to Mahatma Gandhi on his 68th martyrdom day at Rajghat around 9.30 on Saturday morning, Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi was sitting with the students agitating over Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula's death at the Hyderabad Central University.

Rahul reached the protest site a little after midnight and sat with the students for two hours. He rejoined them in the morning and sat on a fast nearly the entire day.

It was the Congress vice-president's second visit -- the first was on January 19 -- to the university campus to express solidarity with the protesting students. According to sources, his closest advisers had gone an extra mile to ensure that few in the Congress knew about the Rahul's plan till the last moment.

With his second visit, the Congress VP conveyed to the world that he is no longer 'episodic' in his political engagements but planned to persist with causes -- whether it was the cause of Dalits, minorities, farmers or, in the days to come, entry of women at religious places.

The visit coincided not just with the Mahatma's martyrdom day. Saturday would have also been the 27th birthday of Vemula. The research scholar, who left behind a moving suicide note, was found hanging in the varsity's hostel room on January 17. That Rahul plans to keep the issue alive portends poorly for a smooth Budget session of Parliament scheduled to begin on or after February 22.

The Congress vice-president's Hyderabad visit spurred as many as half a dozen senior ministers of the Narendra Modi government to criticise him for 'playing politics over dead bodies.' While Highways and Shipping Minister Nitin Gadkari said Rahul was indulging in cheap politics over a sensitive issue, Parliamentary Affairs Minister M Venkaiah Naidu said the government was willing to discuss all issues in the forthcoming Budget session.

The Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs will meet on February 4 to decide the Budget session schedule. Naidu said the government was willing to advance the session if the Opposition were to agree.

The government claims to be keen to get the Goods and Services Tax Constitution amendment and Real Estate bills passed in the session. The winter session was largely disrupted because of Opposition protests.

On the other hand, in a tweet from Hyderabad Rahul said: 'I am here today at the request of Rohith's friends and family, to stand with them in their fight for justice.'

'A young life full of dreams and aspirations was cut short. We owe it to him, to the memory of Gandhiji and to every single Indian student who dreams of an India free from prejudice and injustice,' he said in another tweet.

Sources in the Congress said Rahul was clear that the party should reclaim its lost political ground by reaching out to Dalits and farmers, communities that were once its support base.

They said Rahul had been successful in exposing the 'suit-boot sarkar' on issues like the land bill. A source said Rahul also understands that the prosperous middle class and the expatriate community were unlikely to support the Congress in the near future.

A senior BJP leader said a particular social order has persisted for thousands of years and such incidents have taken place in the past too. "But they are getting highlighted just because the BJP-led government is in power," he said.

The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh backed students union, has called for a bandh of colleges in Telangana to protest against the 'politics over dead bodies' when a peaceful atmosphere was returning in the university.

In Hyderabad, when students raised slogans against Union Ministers Smriti Irani and Bandaru Dattaretreya, Rahul intervened and said: 'Let us not say 'murdabad' to somebody. That will not do justice... I want to respectfully tell Modiji that when you call a young boy anti-national it is a disservice to the people.'