Dispute may end with Congress president Sonia Gandhi personally intervening in the matter.
New Delhi: The more than 15 year-old-old internal dispute regarding which is the “real” Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC-the labour and trade union wing of the Congress) might finally get resolved with Congress president Sonia Gandhi personally intervening in the matter.
Sonia Gandhi has deputed Mallikarjuna Kharge, leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, and former Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, Digvijaya Singh, who is a party general secretary and a Rajya Sabha member, to meet the two factions of INTUC and solve the dispute by this year end.
While one faction of the INTUC is led by the Andhra Pradesh-based 91-year-old Congress leader G. Sanjeev Reddy, the other faction is led by former Dhanbad MP, the 75-year-old Chandrashekar Dubey.
The two factions are likely to be merged into one body. Before Kharge and Singh, Pranab Mukherjee and Oscar Fernandes tried to resolve this issue, unsuccessfully. INTUC, which officially has around 3.5 crore members, is the largest trade union of India. Party sources said that on 9 August, select members from both the factions were summoned to Delhi where they met Kharge and Singh at the 15, Gurudwara Rakabganj Road “war room” of the Congress. While Gandhi was herself not present in the meeting, she had sent a short note, as has been her working style, asking Reddy and Dubey to resolve their differences soon or else the party will take a decision as per its judgment.
During this meeting, the representatives of both sides explained their strength and grievance in front of the two leaders appointed by Sonia Gandhi and made their case on why they are the “real” INTUC. While Reddy group has claimed the membership of almost 2.5 crore members, the Dubey faction has claimed 3.65 crore membership. However, both the factions were unable to respond to the question raised by Singh and Kharge: if they had so many people on their membership roll, why was the party unable to get corresponding votes in the elections? The Congress got almost 11.95 crore votes in the 2019 general elections.
Both the factions have submitted close to 10,000 pages of documents, each, to prove their respective influence in different states through trade unions. From the Reddy side, apart from Reddy, General Secretary Sanjay Singh, Vice president Ashok Singh and senior vice president and former Congress Rajya Sabha member P. Ramchandra Khuntia attended the meet.
Apart from Dubey, senior lawyer Patitapaban Panda, who is also the president of Odisha INTUC, lawyer N.G. Arun, former Rajya Sabha MPs Dheeraj Prasad Sahu and Pradeep Balmuchu appeared for the Dubey faction.
INTUC has considerable influence in various labour wings active in steel, power, railway, coal and the unorganized sector. In 2009, both the factions were awarded formal recognition by the government.
As per INTUC functionaries, the organization influences results in at least 95 Lok Sabha seats which includes four in Jharkhand, three in Chhattisgarh, seven in Maharashtra, two in Himachal Pradesh, at least two in Bihar, two in Delhi and four in West Bengal. However, its influence waned due to the internal dispute in the organization, the result of which started becoming visible in 2009 polls onwards.
“Once the dispute started, leaders of the opposite faction started focusing on defeating each other rather than to work for the Congress candidates. As a result, our vote base too started to move away,” a senior functionary from the Reddy camp told The Sunday Guardian.
In February 2017, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government barred the INTUC, founded three months before Indian independence, from participating in any tripartite or bipartite meetings on both national and international platforms. The then Labour and Employment Minister Bandaru Dattatreya cited the intra-union battle among INTUC’s leadership for its debarment. Following this, INTUC was also unable to attend the deliberations that were convened by the International Labour Organization (ILO).
Once this decades-old internal dispute is resolved, the INTUC is likely to bring the much-sought ground support from the workers that the Congress is desperately trying for. “Mudda sulajhne ki kagar pe hai (The dispute is on the brink of being resolved). Right now, the workers are not interested in being attached with us as we have no power to negotiate on their behalf or ensure their problems are resolved. Once this dispute is resolved, its impact will be immediately visible on the ground and will help the Congress immensely in the 2024 polls,” a senior Jharkhand-based INTUC leader told The Sunday Guardian.
According to Rishikesh Mishra, who is the official spokesperson of the Dubey faction, the merger of the two factions, once it happens, will add massively to the strength of the Congress. “It will be a very positive development for everyone. The rights of labourers, being ignored right now, will get the much-needed fillip. The party will also gain electorally in 2024,” he told The Sunday Guardian.