Two newly-elected Congress MPs Shashi Tharoor and Manish Tewari have made it apparent that they are not exactly humored by Sonia Gandhi's appointment of Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury as the floor leader of the 52-member Congress group in the Lok Sabha. Tharoor, who used to be a regular attendee in the House is seen abstaining. On the other hand, Tiwari comes only occasionally and sits away from the Congress benches and leaves quite early. The third claimant to the floor leader post, Kodikunnil Suresh, has, however, reconciled to having been overlooked.

The problem is that none of the above leaders realize that the Congress-leadership deliberately chose Chowdhury as the floor leader because he is endowed with not intellectual power but disruptive powers. The Congress-leadership  has apparently realized that, since the party doesn't have the strength of number to push its ideas through the house, it would be better to disrupt the functioning of the Lok Sabha as often as possible to remain in the public limelight. The grand old party has theorized that negative publicity is better than no publicity.

The Congress Party's penchant for negative publicity became apparent when on the Yoga Day, Rahul Gandhi tweeted about the Armed Forces dog squads performing Yoga with their trainers.

In this scheme of things, men like Tharoor and Tiwari don't fit in because they are equipped with a sharp intellect and know how to make their points and score in parliamentary debates. Unfortunately, these two leaders have nowhere to go and they can't but blame themselves for Congress Bhakti.

(By M K Shukla & Rakesh Ranjan)