‘The wall around him prevents him from getting quick inputs from the ground’.
New Delhi: With the one-year interim tenure of Congress president Sonia Gandhi ending on 10 August, and the demand for handing over the party affairs to Rahul Gandhi getting more vocal, The Sunday Guardian spoke to Congress men on his image of being an “inaccessible” leader.
Multiple Congress leaders from different states, including former state presidents, former Lok Sabha MPs, sitting and former ministers and MLAs, serving and former district Congress presidents and presidents of different fronts, shared their experience on how easy or difficult it is to convey a message or meet Rahul Gandhi. And almost all of them, except a few, were unanimous in their remarks, that it was one of the most difficult and time-taking tasks to put across something in the ears of RahulGandhi.
The Sunday Guardian also emailed, called, sent SMSs on all the email addresses, land line numbers and mobile numbers that are listed on the Lok Sabha secretariat website and in the election affidavit of RahulGandhi. None of the emails elicited any response, none of the land lines was ever picked up and the mobile numbers listed in his affidavit were not in service.
A former Congress Union minister from a central state who is seen as a member of the “Rahul Brigade” stated that he had been waiting to meet Rahul Gandhi since last Diwali, but has not got the appointment.
“I am considered by the media and party leaders to be a part of the ‘Rahul brigade’, but I have not been able to meet him for months now despite putting multiple requests to his office. You can yourself imagine how difficult it would be for the other ‘junior’ workers to meet their own (de-facto) party president. It is because of this (the wall around him) that Rahul Gandhi is not able to get quick and unadulterated inputs from the ground. There are too many obstacles and gate keepers around Rahul Gandhi,” the former Union minister, who has also been a Lok Sabha MP, said.
Similar was the story shared by a former party spokesperson of a central state, who has been with the party for the last 10-15 years and yet has been unable to spend even two minutes with Rahul Gandhi till now. “I dependon Delhi-based journalists to give my inputs to his office. I wanted to meet Rahul Gandhi in 2018, camped in Delhi for one week, met all kinds of journalists and businessmen who promised me an appointment with him. Nothing materialized in the end. Now I have just dropped the idea of trying to meet him. Rahul Gandhi needs to develop a system where anyone can go and meet him without having to waste time and resources,” he said.
However, former Congressmen and now an MLA from Janta Congress Chhattisgarh, Amit Jogi, whose family members, Ajit Jogi and Renu Jogi, shared a very personal relationship with Sonia Gandhi and continues to do so, despite the Jogis leaving the Congress and forming their own political party, told The Sunday Guardian that meeting Rahul Gandhi was easy for some and not so easy for the others. “From personal experience, it wasn’t too difficult to meet him, but I think he was more prompt and comfortable sharing his thoughts over text messaging. But I had also heard people considered close to him tell me that he could simply shut off for no apparent reason and it would become impossible for them to get across to him. Thankfully that never happened to me! Long after I formed my own party, I simply stopped getting his fortnightly ‘This is my new number. Please delete the old number. RG’ text. In our many conversations, he was always very pleasant and forthright,” Jogi recalled.
Senior Congress leader and Congress national spokesperson, Dr Abhishek Manu Singhvi, while commenting on The Sunday Guardian’s question regarding Rahul Gandhi’s perceived inaccessibility, stated that it would be wrong to say that he is inaccessible. “There is some conceptual confusion. Rahul Gandhi has declared, rightly or wrongly, that for the present, he is not the Congress president or office holder. Hence unavailability for a lot of issues, which are treated as related to this office, is misconstrued as inaccessibility,” Singhvi told The Sunday Guardian.
Divya Spandana, who headed the AICC’s social media and is credited with revamping it, said that it was incorrect to say that Rahul Gandhi was an inaccessible leader. “I disagree that he’s inaccessible. He chooses his time wisely. Whenever there was a crisis or an issue or I needed advise/help pertaining to work, he always gave time and a patient hearing,” Spandana told The Sunday Guardian.
A veteran Congress MLA from Chhattisgarh, who has been a minister multiple times, termed the effort to meet Rahul Gandhi a “fruitless” exercise. “I have never tried meeting him after hearing the experience of other leaders. I have always met him for a couple of minutes, along-with the other leaders, whenever he has come to Chhattisgarh. I have always felt, as an ‘old’ leader of the party, that he should be more accessible as that allows sincere party workers to share the real picture from the ground,” he said.
According to another former spokesperson who has now joined the BJP, Rahul Gandhi was not someone who liked the “durbar culture” referring to a system practiced by former party presidents wherestate leaders were expected to congregate at the office of the party president and just loiter around to pay their obeisance to their leader. “Rahul Gandhi is wary of such culture and hence does not promote the practice of people coming to Delhi just to meet him. This has created an impression that he is ‘inaccessible’,” he said.
According to Dr Singhvi, there was a difference in the functioning style of Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi. “Each person has their own style of functioning. Though with some delay, Sonia Gandhi has entertained visitors unfailingly. Rahul Gandhiis more hands-on and issue-based and may sometimes feel the need to cut down on meetings which consumes a lot of time and energy while not matching with the pressing issue of the day and the week,” Singhvi said.
However, the former Union minister quoted above said that even if Rahul Gandhi’s intention wasnot to promote “durbar culture”, it has made a negative perception on the ground as a few select Delhi-based leaders, with easy accessibility to Rahul Gandhi,have become more powerful as they are seen as the passport to Rahul Gandhi’soffice.
A former party general secretary of an eastern state, who has now moved to another party, attributed the difficulty in getting to meet Rahul Gandhi to his “busy schedule”. “It is not that he does not give appointment, he does, but it takes time because he is a busy man and this gives an impression that he is inaccessible. Whenever we used to meet, he was cordial and would give a patient hearing to us. However, the one thing that he needs to change his attitude of ‘sitting on’ matters and suggestions, he takes a long time to take a decision which upsets the party leaders who are ‘suffering’,” he said.
A Patna-based party sympathizer recalled an incident of 2015 when the elections were taking place in the state. “Former Bihar state Congress president Ram Jatan Sinha, who had been camping in Delhi to meet Rahul Gandhi for weeks, had just returned after losing patience as despite all his efforts, he was unable to get access to Rahul Gandhi. Later, after learning that Rahul Gandhi was coming to Patna for campaigning, he went to the airport and confronted Rahul Gandhi at the VIP lounge of the airport and told him how he had spent weeks in Delhi to meet him, but was not given an appointment. A surprised Rahul Gandhi told Sinha that he was not even aware that Sinha had spent so much time in Delhi just to meet him. A few days later, Sinha left the party,” he recalled.