R Krishna Das
The wait and watch policy of V Narayansamy in dealing with the Puducherry political din had cost dear to the Congress in the Southern state.
Had Narayansamy acted timely to deal with the former Lt. Governor, Kiran Bedi or the rebels within the party, the crises could have been averted. Hours before Rahul Gandhi’s visit to Puducherry on Wednesday, a senior Congress leader said he should have visited them earlier. “His trip today was to instill hope in the minds of all confused leaders. But it was too late. We lost the majority,” he added.
Narayansamy had many battles to fight as the Chief Minister of Puducherry. When Bedi was the stumbling block to implement welfare schemes and basic administrative processes, he knew his party was also getting weaker. For, Bedi was credited for streamlining the administration and making many government operations transparent, spoiling dreams of an established corrupt political system in power.
According to political observers, Bedi made it difficult to retrieve ‘investments’ of the ruling party leaders that they invested to purchase and win seats. Some of the leaders realised that being part of the Congress or the DMK wouldn’t help them in the long run as the Governor, at least for the next four years, would be controlled by Delhi.
This was an important development that Narayansamy failed to address. He was never aggressive, neither with Bedi nor in handling problems in the party. Not only that Narayanasamy wasn’t assertive but he was over confident too for his close camaraderie with Gandhi family and M K Stalin, the chief of DMK, its prime ally.
A senior DMK leader blamed Narayansamy for his “cold” approach both in dealing with Bedi and the inner party problems. “Knowing this was coming, we suggested to him months ago to resign and face polls to avert this crisis,” the DMK leader said, adding that Narayansamy never bothered about the brewing crises. If he had resigned at a time when Lt. Guv Bedi was intervening in the government administration, it would have been justified.
Neither Narayanasamy nor Congress high command bothered to consider these threats until the last moment.
