With Sonia backing him to the hilt, Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi sticks to his grand plan of rebuilding the party from scratch and marginalising its old guard
With Sonia backing him to the hilt, Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi sticks to his grand plan of rebuilding the party from scratch and marginalising its old guard.
I asked Jayanthi to protect the environment, the poor and the tribals. I'm not afraid of saying it and I will continue to do so." Words with a subliminal message. Rahul Gandhi's emphatic reaction at an election rally in Delhi on February 4 to former UPA 2 environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan's exit from the party five days earlier was a signal to senior leaders that it's his writ that'll run in the Congress.
The assertion comes amid fears that while quitting, Natarajan, by expressing her displeasure at the way she was treated by Rahul and Congress President Sonia Gandhi, vocalised an angst several other heavyweights have been murmuring in private ever since the humiliating defeat in the Lok Sabha polls last year and subsequent losses in four assembly elections.
In the last 14 months, nearly a dozen top leaders, including two UPA ministers-Natarajan and Krishna Tirath-have left the party. Several others are also reportedly on the verge of quitting, but the dice is loaded against them. Sonia has stopped mediating between Rahul and the disgruntled senior leaders, even confiding in a close aide a day after Natarajan's letter of grievances written in November became public on January 30 that such incidents would not stop Rahul from taking charge
of the party. She also recalled how she had faced similar questions about her ability when she became the Congress president in 1998.
With Sonia backing her son, loyalty to the Nehru-Gandhi family, an old touchstone of Congress politics, doesn't carry the heft it once did. Former Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, who even fought the Lok Sabha polls against Finance Minister Arun Jaitley at Sonia's request, has sent several feelers to the mother and son duo indicating he would quit the 2015 party if state Congress chief Partap Singh Bajwa is not replaced, but in vain. Rahul is adamant on not sacking Bajwa, who was handpicked by the Congress vice-president in 2013.
Another stalwart, P. Chidambaram, had to rush to 12, Tughlaq Road, Rahul's office-cum-residence, after Tamil Nadu Congress chief EVKS Elangovan had dared the former finance minister and his son Karti to quit the party. Elangovan, chosen by Rahul after G.K. Vasan quit the Congress to revive Tamil Maanila Congress, a breakaway party formed in 1996 by his father G.K. Moopanar, was reportedly admonished by Sonia though party spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi claimed Elangovan never took Chidambaram's name.
Party General Secretary Janardan Dwivedi was also censured by party communication cell chief Ajay Maken and summoned subsequently by the disciplinary committee headed by A.K. Antony on Rahul's instructions despite denying, within hours, comments praising Prime Minister Narendra Modi attributed to him by a website-all this while Sonia kept mum.
In Haryana, former chief minister and Sonia loyalist Bhupinder Singh Hooda is upset at attempts to promote a new party leadership in the state. Last year, 38-year-old Ashok Tanwar, a Rahul protg, was made state president. After the assembly polls in November, when the party had been reduced to 15 seats, Kiran Choudhry, from the anti-Hooda camp, was chosen to lead the Congress Legislature Party. In Chhattisgarh, former chief minister Ajit Jogi is peeved at Rahul's proximity to his arch-rival Bhupesh Baghel. In adjoining Madhya Pradesh, ex-Union minister Kamal Nath is reportedly miffed over not being chosen as the leader of the party in the Lok Sabha despite being the most experienced and senior among 44 MPs of the party. In Assam, Himanta Biswa Sarma, the chief architect of Congress's landslide victory in 2011, has been wooed by the BJP ever since he quit as a minister in July last year in a failed bid to usurp power from Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi. Rahul has met Sarma thrice since but not rehabilitated the former health and education minister yet.
The old guard has struck back somewhat by fomenting trouble for Rahul's appointees in states such as Kerala, Bihar and West Bengal and stalling his grand plan to introduce elections to the Congress Working Committee (CWC) and for state president posts. "There has been a concerted effort on the part of some Congress leaders to defame and weaken Rahul Gandhi," says Anil Shastri, a special invitee to the CWC.
But the die is cast. If a former Union minister is to be believed, Rahul intends to build the Congress from scratch and wants 'conventional' politicians to leave the party. "He doesn't care. He made his intent clear in a speech to Youth Congress leaders in December 2014. For him, there is a clear demarcation between Congress before 2007 and Congress after it. He doesn't want those from the pre-2007 era," says the former Union minister, referring to Rahul introducing elections in the Youth Congress that year.
Plans for such a radical overhaul have been emboldened by some new-found successes in states such as Rajasthan, where more than 70 politicians, including four former ministers and seven former MLAs, have joined the state unit-headed by Sachin Pilot-since March 2014.
Rahul's restructuring has even extended to shifting Kanishka Singh, his man Friday, to 35, Lodhi Estate, to work with his sister Priyanka. The transfer of Singh, an MBA from Wharton, along with Rajasthan civil service officer Dhiraj Srivastava, who was Sonia's private secretary and later officer on special duty to the National Advisory Council, to Priyanka's team has also led to speculation that she might play a bigger role in the party.
While Natarajan's departure is unlikely to make any impact in the electoral fortunes of the Congress in Tamil Nadu where the party has little base, big guns such as Amarinder Singh-who demonstrated his clout within the Punjab Congress by drawing 30 of the 43 party MLAs and former Union minister Manish Tewari to his 'Lalkar Rally' in Amritsar on January 24-Ajit Jogi or Himanta Biswa Sarma can inflict serious damage to the organisational structure of the party in their respective states. While Rahul is keen to start his revival plan from the states, his detractors want to ensure the status quo. Unsure of the other's strength, both sides are biding time, for now.
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