Assembly elections in five states including West Bengal, Kerala and Tamilnadu will be litmus test for Gandhi family: At this juncture, the Congress has become practically irrelevant in the national political context
Abdulhafiz Lakhani siyasat.net
Facing decimation in one state after another, the Congress party’s troika of Sonia Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, and Rahul Gandhi is Facing a fresh challenge from within. This comes after 23 senior leaders of the party questioned the Gandhi family’s control over the party.
In a letter, they demanded sweeping reforms, transparent internal elections, and a “full time visible leadership”. The troika dithered and persisted with its indecisive ness. After the party’s debacle in Bihar election in which Congress proved to be the weakest link in Mahagathbandhan, Kapil Sibbal who was one of the signatories to the letter, revived the debate with remark that the time for introspection is over. We know the answers. The Congress must be brave and willing to recognize them.
Sibal was strongly criticised by Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehalot and senior leader Salman khurshid. In a tweet, Gehlot said, ” There was no need for Mr. Kapil Sibbal to mention our internal issues to the media. This has hurt the sentiments of
workers across the country.” Khurshid called Sibal and other critics of leadership” doubting Thomases” who get ” periodic pangs of anxiety”.
Khurshid also advised dissenters to desist from going public against the leadership. He
advised the dissenters to desist from going public with their criticisms. By going public against the leadership close on the heels of former US President Barack Obama’s negative depiction of Rahul Gandhi in his forthcoming book, the dissenters have complicated the complicated for Sonia and Rahul Gandhi.
To what extent the leadership will go in reform and loosen its hold is easy to predict but the time for it to act is now.
Sources said that the leadership issue was likely to be taken up at the AICC meeting which is likely to be held in late January or early February and preparations for which have already begun.
Assembly elections in five states including West Bengal, Kerala and Tamilnadu will be the litmus test for Gandhi family.
Nevertheless, Rahul will likely not relinquish the sceptre. The least he can do is drop his backseat-driving tactic, take responsibility and become the president of the party. He will then have the luxury of selecting his own working committee. If he has any nous or sense, he will not vindictively render irrelevant the 23 leaders who pleaded in their August letter to Sonia that actions be undertaken to instal an elected leader, refurbish the organisation by, inter alia, reviving the Parliamentary Board and instituting organisational elections, and embark on a mass-contact programme. Despite Rahul’s immature reaction to the letter at a Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting in which he read the letter as an attack on Sonia’s leadership, there is enough circumstantial evidence to suggest that the letter was written in good faith, unlike the jejune potshots taken by Sanjay Jha, once a party spokesman.
At this juncture, the Congress has become practically irrelevant in the national political context. It may sound clichéd, but the fact is that for democracy to survive, forget flourish, a functional, forget vigorous, Opposition, is a desideratum. Thus, at the national level, the Congress needs to revive itself to provide the necessary framework for a national Opposition. The BJP in its current avatar is a predatory party. That fact must be accepted rather than moaned about when the Congress sets about trying to chart its future.
In August, when the 23 senior leaders had raised issues critical to the party organisation, they were confronted and accused of being disloyal at a meeting of Congress leaders which was attended by both Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi.
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