Reminiscing the earlier days in Congress, Amit Malik, who resigned from Congress and joined the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP), said, “I joined Congress in 1996 and went on to become Delhi University Student Union’s vice-president in 1999. Looking back, even I feel surprised at how a political party which played a key role in forming India’s history could be allowed to become this dismal. The leaders in Congress are no longer concerned about their workers. Their neglect of the workers will continue to bring them further down. Though the UPA lost power, the workers on the ground did not stop their work. Rahul Gandhi had assured us that the Youth Congress will play a crucial role and we, too, believed that the Youth Congress will help revive the party, but the young men in the party who could have and were willing to work hard for the senior leadership, were totally ignored.”
Barkha Shukla Singh, former chief of Delhi Commission of Women (DCW), who too left Congress and joined the BJP, said, “I come from a ‘Congressi’ family. Since my forefathers, generations of my family have been supporters of the Congress. But if you continue to treat your own people as slaves, there is only so much one can tolerate. If even a person of my stature cannot have easy access to leaders in the party, what can you expect for any other person? I did not think of myself as an average party worker. I worked and built the Mahila Congress to where it is today and helped the DCW become an agency that people can come to. But if this is the treatment I get, you can only imagine how isolated must the lower ranks feel.”
Arvinder Singh Lovely, whose exit from the Congress has by far been the most crucial body blow to Congress, said, “I am being termed a traitor. But who is the real traitor here? The person who is in the party and does not work for its growth or the one who wants to work for the party, but is not being paid any heed? I lived with the Congress for 30 years. When I started, there was always dialogue on what the vision of senior leaders in the party was and what the workers’ expectations were. If there were grievances, they were addressed. But even somebody like me was not able to relay the messages.”
Barkha Singh said, “I wrote a complaint against Ajay Maken after the MCD bypolls were conducted, nine months ago, because I did not approve of the way he was treating us. Expecting a reply to the complaint ended up becoming a dream, given that nobody even took the cognizance of the letter sent in the first place.”
Speaking about the recently concluded MCD elections, Arvinder Lovely said, “P.C. Chacko is the man to be blamed for this situation. His job was to act as an effective communicator between the people on the ground and the people in the AC rooms. He totally failed at his job. Congress was a party of the people, that was its character, but now it is a party only for the elitist. The Congress is in a crisis, its members want to bring it out of crisis, but the senior leadership is not willing to meet us. So what can we do?”
Malik said, “The head of the family needs to have a character. Rahul Gandhi lacks that character of being the leader of the party. He is not just incapable, but is unwilling to do anything. But this is not about the incapability of one person alone. Soniaji is mostly preoccupied with her illness. So there is only so much we can blame her for. Since Rahul Gandhi is sitting on the chair of vice-president of the party, he will have to take the responsibility.”