Bizarre are the ways of the Congress's functioning these days. Some insiders feel if Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi continue to run the Congress as per their whims, the grand old party will cease to rule any State by June 2018 except for Punjab, Mizoram and Pudducherry where defections and toppling Government games in order to achieve a total 'Congress mukt Bharat' cannot be ruled out.
The real prospects of a 'Congress mukt Bharat' seem to be influencing the party leadership's decision to draft Rahul loyalist Madhusudan Mistry as a member of the Congress Election Authority, a near-defunct body that functions from room number 39, actually a makeshift barrack, situated right at the entrance of 24, Akbar Road, New Delhi.
Ostensibly, Mistry's task is to conduct year-end free and fair polls of an organisation having over 20 million members but in real terms, Mistry's mission is to ensure Rahul's victory in the party polls. For old-timers the development is a telling commentary on the state of the Congress where Nehru-Gandhi family members are no longer sure about winning party organisational polls.
After the Congress's debacle in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly election and the Delhi municipal corporation polls, the Congress's internal assessment is thatthe Gujarat Assembly election may see an unprecedented clamour for a huge BJP victory. Congress strategists feel closer to the poll, BJP national president Amit Shah may raise the issue of Prime Minister Narendra Modi being the "pride of Gujarat" and ask voters to give a bigger mandate than Uttar Pradesh. Senior Congress leaders are not at all confident of the party holding on to States like Karnataka and Himachal Pradesh where seasoned chief ministers Siddaramaiah and Vir Bhadra Singh are holding the fort. In such a grim scenario, the chances of the BJP playing havoc with the Congress-ruled States of Meghayala, Mizoram and Puducherry cannot be ruled out.
It is, therefore, interesting to note a rather out-of-character role Sonia Gandhi is trying to play these days. She is trying to be a leading force of the party, instead of Rahul. It is surprising because since 2013 she has repeatedly told members of the Congress Working Committeethat she would like to be "relieved" of her post as party president. But after the Congress was wiped out in Uttar Pradesh, Sonia has shown no signs of retiring from active politics. In fact, at present she is said to be keen on propping up a joint Opposition candidate for the coming presidential election in July.
At the organisational level, she alone has the authority to take away States like Karnataka and Goa from Digvijaya Singh and appoint the likes of Ashok Gehlot, Chella Kumar and KC Venugopal as the party's pointsmen in some States. The piecemeal approach of putting pawns in strategic places sounds baffling for puritans in the party who wonder why Sonia cannot announce polls for the president's post and give AICC delegates an opportunity to elect a new Congress Working Committee. The game plan seems to be to first pack the AICC secretariat with pliable persons, reward loyalty at various levels and then work for a "consensus" in Rahul's favour as the new AICC chief. It may sound ironical that Sonia is also averse to the idea of giving Rahul a free hand on the grounds that his otherwise dim view of many family retainers and time servers in the party may prompt large-scale purging and a possible exudes.
(Rasheed Kidwai is the Associate Editor with The Telegraph. His Twitter handle is: @rasheedkidwai)
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