She should rid the party of existing ‘incompetent advisors’ immediately; internal tussle of the party is attributable to just a couple of leaders.
New Delhi: The Congress high command has not yet been able to take any bold decisions despite the party’s crushing defeat in the five state elections. The leadership may have taken resignations of PCC chiefs of these five states, but no action has been taken against those responsible for the poll drubbing.
As a result, the internal tussle in the party is going on. However, Congress interim chief Sonia Gandhi has taken initiatives to resolve the crisis through discussions with the disgruntled leaders. That’s the reason why no action has been taken against Kapil Sibal despite his recent verbal attacks on the Gandhi family. The leaders who are actually behind the party’s poor electoral showing are mounting pressure on Rahul Gandhi to sack Sibal. But Rahul Gandhi seems to be under pressure for the first time because of the disgruntled leaders, aka G23. In fact, the resentment is not because of the Gandhis, but due to the strategists who are still misguiding Rahul Gandhi. That the Congress’ performance was going to be poor was clear soon after the voting. But these leaders continued to ignore the reality. Punjab in-charge Harish Chaudhary and Uttarakhand in-charge Devender Yadav were arrogantly claiming that the Congress was going to win.
That Congress would not get anything in Uttar Pradesh was quite predictable in view of the kind of team Priyanka Gandhi Vadra was having. Her experiment to handpick experienced and young leaders did not succeed. But defeats in Punjab, Goa, Manipur and Uttarakhand were a big setback for the Congress. The leaders who were handling poll affairs in these states kept the high command in the dark, as they continued to claim that the Congress’ victory was certain in Goa and Uttarakhand, and that the party would emerge as the single largest outfit in Punjab. They ignored the signals that the APP would win big in Punjab.
Similarly, it was also clear what Uttarakhand had in store. The BJP had already gained advantage following rallies by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. Internal fight of the Congress also strengthened the BJP’s position. Likewise, the BJP government in Manipur was a foregone conclusion. However, the scene was not clear about Goa.
But despite all these signals, the Congress leaders who were in charge of these states, gave the high command misleading information claiming the party’s “certain victory”. The high command took their claim seriously and, therefore, rushed Priyanka Gandhi Vadra to Jaipur to meet Ashok Gehlot to chalk out a strategy to protect the Congress MLAs from poaching after counting. The leadership was, in fact, sure that the party would get quite close to the majority mark in Uttarakhand, Punjab and Goa.
Rahul Gandhi’s trusted lieutenants, namely K.C. Venugopal, Randeep Surjewala, Ajay Maken, P. Chidambaram, Avinash Pandey, Ambika Soni and Rajeev Shukla were all handling the party’s electoral affairs in these states. Moreover, Harish Chaudhary and Devender Yadav were full-time in charge of Punjab and Uttarakhand respectively. All these leaders were claiming Congress’ victory and high command took these loyalists’ views seriously. So naturally, the Gandhis were targeted after the Congress’ defeat.
What irks the dissenters more is the Gandhi family’s non-action against these advisors despite a series of defeats faced by the Congress. The G23 is raising questions as to why these leaders are given importance despite all this. The poll results of Assam, Kerala, Goa, Uttarakhand, Manipur and Punjab show that either the high command is being kept in the dark or it is deliberately closing its eyes to reality. There is no denying that the AAP’s big poll victory has pressed alarm bells for the Congress. Now the newbie will put up a strong fight in some other states at the cost of Congress. With this in view, Kapil Sibal targeted the Gandhi family leading to intensification of internal tussle impacting the image of the Gandhis badly. Amid the possibility of a split, the Gandhi family looked under pressure and went into firefighting mode to save the party. Sonia Gandhi contacted Ghulam Nabi Azad, while Rahul Gandhi reached out to former Haryana CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda who is also a disgruntled leader. Observers are of the view that the high command should dissolve all the party units in the country and form a core group of key leaders instead, so as to silence those immediately who are raising questions. The party needs to take this step particularly in view of the Gujarat and Himachal elections which are due this year only. If Congress again fails to perform well in these two states, then next year polls will be more challenging for the grand old party. If not all the state units, then the high command should dissolve the AICC at least. A team of experienced leaders should be formed to guide the party till the election of a full-time president.