Succumbing to pressure from her senior colleagues, Congress president Sonia Gandhi has agreed to continue in her present position for the time being, setting to rest speculation regarding son Rahul’s elevation as the head of the party. However, Rahul is expected to be made the working president sometime this month, while sister Priyanka could be assigned a party role as well. The changes may come into effect before Indira Gandhi’s birth centenary celebrations start on 19 November.
The Congress Working Committee is meeting on Monday to take a decision essentially for moving up the organisational elections by one more year. A similar exercise had been conducted on 8 September last year, where the party decided to push the date for completion of the organisation elections till 31 December 2016. However, since there is little probability of the internal poll process being completed by the stipulated date, the deadline is now sought to be extended further for another year.
Sources said that Sonia Gandhi, the longest serving Congress president was keen to hand over the baton to Rahul, who, in any case, has been functioning as the de facto boss since his elevation as the vice president in January 2013 at the Working Committee meeting held on the sidelines of a Chintan Shivir (brain storming session) in Jaipur. Nevertheless, several senior colleagues persuaded Sonia Gandhi to hold on to her post, given that the party rank and file was yet unready to accept Rahul as the chief and in view of next year’s Assembly elections in several states, including Uttar Pradesh, which would determine the future course of national politics. Sources said that Priyanka too shared this view and prevailed upon her mother to carry on as the president.
Party insiders believe that Rahul and Priyanka are politically not always on the same page and their differences on crucial issues have often come out in the open during their respective interactions with Congress activists and workers. It is being said that the party’s month-long Deoria to Delhi Yatra in September-October was originally conceived keeping Priyanka in mind, but anticipating that it would overshadow him on the political stage, Rahul decided to undertake it himself. Several months ago, Priyanka had informed Rahul that he could do whatever he wanted to do regarding appointments in the party, but as long as their mother was physically fit, she would continue to remain at the helm of affairs. This was obviously done to ensure that there were no mass desertions from the grand old party whose grassroots workers desire to see Priyanka taking over the reins of the organisation nurtured, amongst others, by four generations of the Nehru Gandhis. Priyanka’s visage reminds them of Indira Gandhi.
Sources said that while it took some effort, Rahul seems to be comfortable with the working president’s designation, which technically does not exist in the Congress Constitution, but sets him apart from the rest since it was once conferred in the 1980s on UP strongman and Indira Gandhi loyalist, the late Kamlapati Tripathi. It is another matter that Kamlapati Tripathi, whose grandson, Rajeshpati “Abu” Tripathi is now involved in the UP preparations, had on one occasion openly revolted against the late Rajiv Gandhi and had to be subsequently pacified with enormous difficulty.
Incidentally, there was no designation such as the vice president in the Congress Constitution either, but the post was created by Rajiv Gandhi in the late 1980s to placate Arjun Singh as also to give him a raised and exalted status to counter Vishwanath Pratap Singh’s growing influence in the Rajput community in particular. The late Jitendra Prasada, who was Rajiv’s political adviser in the post-Makhan Lal Fotedar era, was, in the 1990s, also appointed the vice president by Sitaram Kesri during the latter’s brief tenure as the party president. Similarly, the Congress had nominated Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna as the secretary general in 1980 to furnish him a distinct identity on his return to the party fold by the late Sanjay Gandhi. Bahuguna exited from the Congress within six months to successfully contest on his own steam against Chander Mohan Singh Negi from Garhwal.
Sources said that there is also pressure on the Congress president to appoint Priyanka as the secretary general to accord her a formal role in the party affairs. It has been a subject of speculation whether Priyanka would extensively campaign in the Assembly elections in UP. More than a handful of Rahul’s supporters are eager that she does so, particularly because her presence and active participation would not have any positive impact on the final outcome, especially because the contest is primarily going to be between the BSP and the BJP, with the Congress and the Samajwadi Party amongst the also-rans. This would also, subsequently, help in containing the clamour for bringing her on the political centre stage and silence her supporters, thus leaving Rahul as the unquestioned leader of the party.
It is also said that the party was virtually divided between the supporters of Rahul and Priyanka and a proxy war was going on between them. Most of the old guard and those belonging to Sonia Gandhi’s coterie are against Rahul, though they themselves are responsible for the party’s plight, despite the fact that they attempt to shift the blame on the vice president. Factionalism is not new to the Congress, but this time it has boiled down to Rahul vs Priyanka groupies. For instance, if Ajay Maken is aligned with Rahul in Delhi, his archrival Sheila Dikshit has jostled to proximity to Priyanka, who helped her in her projection as the party’s Chief Ministerial face in U.P.
In the meanwhile, Sonia Gandhi is in a serious dilemma. She is anxious to see her son succeed her, while her colleagues would prefer her daughter. Varied developments are likely to unfold in the grand old party later this month.