One Take | BJP Has the Last Laugh in Mimicry vs Suspension Row as Oppn Licks Wounds After Losing 'Lifeline'

There is no denying that the issues raised by the Opposition did somewhat click — one was the Lok Sabha security breach; second was that while Home Minister Amit Shah was giving interviews when Parliament was in session, there was absolute silence from him inside the House; and third, missing Mysuru MP Pratap Simha seems to have gone scot free after issuing passes to the Lower House intruders.

The Opposition has been on the wrong side when it comes to matters of national security. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP have often used the several terror attacks during Dr Manmohan Singh’s tenure as well as many in Congress asking for proof of surgical strikes to launch an attack on the Opposition. So much so, many in the Congress admitted after the Lok Sabha poll results of 2014 that the questioning of surgical strikes had done them in. In the Parliament beach, the Opposition found a lifeline to hit the BJP back with the same stick.

But, the streak did not last for long. While the Opposition kept hitting on the fact that under this government, if Parliament was not safe, then how could the people be, the BJP managed to build a counter soon enough.

As videos of Banerjee mimicking chairperson of Rajya Sabha Jagdeep Dhankhar came out, the BJP smiled in hidden glee as they now had an issue to counter the Opposition’s narrative. PM Modi led the charge by calling up Dhankhar and sympathising with him, mentioning that he too had been a victim of ridicule. The President and Speaker too jumped in as NDA MPs supported the Vice-President.

Time has shown that whenever the prime minister has been targeted personally, he has managed to use it to his advantage politically. For that matter, even Sonia Gandhi used the trick in 2004 when she was made fun of for her foreign origins and English-accented Hindi. Mamata Banerjee followed suit when she was mimicked and made fun of with the phrase ‘Didi o Didi’.

So, Mamata Banerjee is clearly uncomfortable with what her MP did but doesn’t want to chasten him publicly. However, when she said Rahul Gandhi had taken the video, which is why the narrative went viral, it’s the shrewd politician in her that came to the fore. She knows very well that personal attacks can help the prime minister.

This is why PM Modi and the BJP want to turn the entire discourse away from the suspension to mimicry. Making fun definitely helps some in politics.