Congress Hopes to End Leadership Crisis on August 10

Still trying to recover from the shock of the 2019 national poll loss, the Congress hopes to find a new president on Saturday to steer the grand old party through the multiple challenges that it faces.

The all-powerful Congress Working Committee is scheduled to meet on August 10 at the party’s national headquarters, over two months after incumbent Rahul Gandhi resigned and urged the party to find a replacement.  

Finding that person, given Rahul Gandhi’s and his sister and senior party leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s reluctance to take up the job, has been bothering the party’s rank and file and has led to several round of formal and informal discussions across states.

Since Rahul Gandhi offered to resign at the first CWC meet on May 25, held just two days after Lok Sabha results on May 23, and met with a unanimous rejection of his proposal, senior leaders have tried their luck through several rounds of consultations to persuade him to stay on. Some even suggested the name of Priyanka Gandhi, who has reportedly turned down the offer.

In between, the names of veterans Mallikarjuna Kharge, Sushil Kumar Shinde and even Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot cropped up as a compromise candidate or an interim arrangement but there was no official word on the reports. As the party grappled with the leadership crisis, the old guard versus the younger leader power tussle again resurfaced with Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh suggesting that a younger leader should replace Rahul Gandhi.

Mumbai Congress chief Milind Deora, considered to be close to Rahul Gandhi, went on record to suggest the names of younger leaders, such as Rajasthan deputy chief minister Sachin Pilot and senior Madhya Pradesh leader Jyotiraditya Scindia as probables.

Sources said the younger leaders are apprehensive that the old guard may not give them the opportunities they were getting under Rahul Gandhi and an indication of this was the huge protests that the youth wings had staged in Delhi and across states against his voluntary exit.

The CWC meet on Saturday is also significant as it would throw up a non-Gandhi to head the party after a gap of 21 years when Sonia Gandhi took over the reins in 1998. She paved way for Rahul Gandhi who became Congress chief in December 2017.

Since then the party won crucial Assembly elections in Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, giving it a lot of hopes, but could improve its Lok Sabha tally only marginally from 44 in 2014 to 52. In a rude shock to the Congress strategists, Prime Minister Narendra Modi came back to power with a bigger mandate. Rahul Gandhi lost his traditional bastion, Amethi, but won from Wayanad in Kerala. In most states, the party was routed and the writing on the wall was there for all to see, including the high command.

Sources close to Rahul Gandhi say he wants a culture of accountability in the party and decided to quit to set a personal example as none of the veterans offered to resign. But his critics argue that as Congress president, he had all the powers and even CWC’s endorsement, to radically restructure the party to prepare it for future challenges.

The challenges are many. First, the Congress has been out of power at the Centre since 2014 after ruling the country from 2004 to 2014. Second, it rules only in Punjab, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Puducherry and is virtually non-existent across big states like Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Bihar and Gujarat. Recently it lost its coalition government in Karnataka to a power-hungry BJP as several party lawmakers in Goa joined the saffron party and Telangana Rashtra Samithi in Telangana.

The ill effects of a leadership crisis in the Congress showed up during the recently concluded Parliament session when the party could not effectively articulate its position over Bills relate to Triple Talaq and the removal of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir. In fact, the Congress parliamentary party, headed by Sonia Gandhi, was divided over the Article 370 issue. The party also failed to anchor the other Opposition parties against the government move.

Interestingly, Scindia, deployed by Rahul Gandhi to turn around the party’s prospects in UP along with Priyanka Gandhi before the Lok Sabha polls, supported the government on Article 370, going against the party’s official line articulated after another CWC meet on August 6.

Parliament apart, the Congress needs to address critical gaps in its party organisation across states, bring promising new faces to the fore and give them key party roles and be seen as fighting for issues like joblessness, sliding economy, communal divide, plight of the poor and the wide spread farm crisis, affecting the people.

However, to be able to do that effectively, the Congress first needs to set its own house in order and take a call on who would lead the party.

“Only power or a Gandhi at the helm can keep the Congress united...otherwise the party will break up,” said a senior party leader.

He added the new person may not get a free hand if not endorsed by the Gandhis, who will continue to exert their influence within the party and among the voters alike. 

The writer is an independent journalist based in Delhi. The views are personal.