Gandhis for Marg Darshak Mandal

There is intense speculation in certain political circles on what kind of role the newly elected Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge would assign to the Gandhis in the organization to enable him to function as his own master while heading the party.
While Kharge is viewed as someone who was chosen by the family in order to keep themselves relevant, only time would tell whether he would go down in history as a mere puppet or someone who led from the front with his own ideas.
It is after 24 years that the Congress has chosen a non-Gandhi as the president and he would have to deal with a non-existent organization and a demoralized cadre ahead of the final confrontation with the BJP in 2024 Parliamentary elections.
A significant takeaway from the recently concluded election is that those who voted for Shashi Tharoor, evidently do not endorse what the Gandhis have been trying to do over the past few years. In fact, the 11% votes bagged by Tharoor, a three-time MP from Kerala, have a very strong message for those who were in-charge of the party for so many years.
Most people never expected the diplomat turned politician to reach a three-figure mark; the late Jitendra Prasada, former political secretary to both Rajiv Gandhi and P.V. Narasimha Rao, who contested against Sonia Gandhi in 2000 could obtain only 94 votes. Therefore, Tharoor has emerged as the voice of activists who do not believe in the style of working of the Gandhis.
Coming back to Kharge, the veteran leader from Karnataka would have to assert himself in the party, which is controlled by the Gandhis, in order to break free and address issues independently. A WhatsApp forward, which was extremely uncharitable to Kharge, showed him in a blue turban with the caption that he had been elected as Dr Manmohan Singh, unfairly indicating that he too would be a remote-controlled functionary.
What most people are unable to figure out is that whenever a person occupies an important position like Kharge has at this moment, the relationships within the party can undergo a change. He may not necessarily function as a rubber stamp of the Gandhis and could pull a trick or two from his own arsenal of political experience.
One can recall K. Brahmananda Reddy, who was elected as the Congress president in 1977 after Indira Gandhi was defeated from Rae Bareli. He was the former Prime Minister’s nominee and had trounced both Siddhartha Shankar Ray and Dr Karan Singh to be elected as the Congress president to succeed D.K. Barooah.
Reddy was both an astute and perceptive politician and realized that he had to break away from being viewed as the candidate of Indira Gandhi. During his installation ceremony, he sent out a very strong message by starting his speech even before Indira Gandhi arrived, thus spelling out that political equations were bound to change. Indira Gandhi eventually broke the party for the second time to assert her existence and later returned to power in 1980.
Kharge’s greatest dilemma would be that when he reconstitutes the Congress Working Committee after going through the various processes involved, he would be always overshadowed by the presence of the three Gandhis in the body. Former Union Minister P. Chidambaram, in recent TV interviews, has also been claiming that the party would once again reconstitute the Congress Parliamentary Board, which shall be the supreme decision-making body.
Whether Chidambaram should be setting the agenda for the new president is something which can be questioned. However, if the CPB indeed is formed, it shall certainly have the Gandhis in it.
In other words, even when Kharge is presiding over the meetings, he would have to balance between what he wishes to do and what the Gandhis would be saying in that forum. Majority of members of both the CWC and CPB, may follow the signals of the Gandhis and thus ignore the will of the president.
One of the reasons why the Bhartiya Janata Party constituted the Marg Darshak Mandal in 2014 to deny important roles to some of its senior leaders was because the saffron brigade wanted to give the newly elected Prime Minister and the office bearers a free hand. A similar situation has arisen in the Congress and it would have to be seen whether Kharge confines the Gandhis to the grand old party’s version of the Marg Darshak Mandal in order to remain supreme. If such a move takes place, it could have serious consequences.
As it is, confusing signals have been emanating from the Congress camp during the past few months. Even after the process of electing the new president had been initiated, decisions continued to be taken by the interim chief at the behest of a small coterie.
Whether some of these decisions would be reversed would reflect where Kharge stands in his new role. Secondly, while Kharge is the boss, the entire focus of the Congress is on Rahul Gandhi and his Bharat Jodo Yatra, which pre-supposes that for all practical purposes, he would be projected as a likely face to take on Narendra Modi in 2024.
The new president needs to have a clear vision on how to resuscitate the party and if the Gandhis have been rejected by the electorate repeatedly, would it be appropriate to keep them in the front ranks? The party needs to be strengthened and its weakness is because of the Gandhis. Between us.