A month gone, Kharge’s Congress still caught in status quo

Among the many avowed reasons that drove the Congress party to finally have an election last month to pick its full-time president was the urgency for organisational reform and to fill what votaries of change within the party had been criticising as a “leadership vacuum”. On October 19, that requirement for a full-time president was met with Mallikarjun Kharge comfortably winning the Congress presidential election against his challenger, Shashi Tharoor.

A month has gone by since then; Kharge formally assumed charge on October 26. For a party that has been in freefall for nearly a decade, it’s unfair to expect that a month would be enough for the new Congress president to set all things right.

Yet, given how the Congress itself projected the election of its new chief as a panacea for all its troubles and, upon Kharge’s victory, asserted that long-due correctives would now be applied post-haste, it was expected that preliminary steps for reform and revival would be visible by now. After all, with the Gandhi family standing firmly behind him and support for his presidency coming from a cross-section of party leaders, status quo-ists and reform-seekers alike, Kharge has no real impediment to rolling out the organisational revamp that his party desperately needs.

Also read: Mallikarjun Kharge takes charge as Congress president; Sonia ‘relieved’

Status quo

However, the Congress seems to be stuck in exactly the same morass that it was in before Sonia Gandhi handed over its reins to the octogenarian stalwart.

The turf-war between Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot and his intra-party rival Sachin Pilot that Sonia had left for Kharge to resolve, continues to embarrass the party. It has, in fact, only got worse with Ajay Maken making it clear that he no longer wants to handle the Congress’s Rajasthan desk.

“Resolving the Rajasthan crisis was supposed to be a priority for Kharge as it was something that had revived just before the Congress presidential election when Kharge, along with Maken, was sent by Sonia to Jaipur to discuss the possibility of a change of chief minister. Within days of Kharge’s victory, Pilot demanded a swift end to the suspense over leadership in Rajasthan and Gehlot had shot back saying the central leadership will decide on the matter. Kharge has allowed the situation to linger. He can’t adopt the Narasimha Rao policy of making indecision seem like a calculated decision. Whether in Gehlot’s favour or Pilot’s is immaterial, but Kharge should have acted by now,” a senior party leader told The Federal.

The steering committee that Kharge had formed immediately after dissolving the Congress Working Committee upon assuming the party’s presidency, hasn’t had any meetings to discuss a future roadmap for the embattled party. Though the party had put out an official release after Kharge’s election stating that all members of the CWC, party general secretaries and in-charges had resigned, in reality, nothing seems to have changed organisationally.

“If we go by that announcement, we are actually worse off now because officially, with the exception of Kharge and the steering committee, which by the way has not had any meaningful discussions yet, the party has no office bearer now. People are just continuing in their previously assigned roles without any official authority while others who had hoped to be accommodated are still waiting,’ a party general secretary told The Federal.

Lacking clarity

With Parliament’s winter session due to begin on December 7, there is no clarity on how the Congress plans to corner the Narendra Modi government beyond the usual disruptions, walk-outs and attacks on issues of rising unemployment, economic crisis, Chinese incursion in Ladakh, et al – all issues that have been constant for the last several parliamentary sessions. It is not even clear who the Congress will finally nominate as Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, the post Kharge gave up when he entered the party’s presidential contest in September.

And, while Rahul Gandhi continues to draw massive public support to the Bharat Jodo Yatra, the role Kharge has in it, beyond occasional participation, remains unclear. As does the big question of how, as party president, Kharge plans to leverage the visible goodwill that the yatra is creating for Rahul into a workable plan of action for the Congress’s electoral and organisational rejuvenation.

Congress sources told The Federal that days before she made way for Kharge, Sonia had signed off on a restructuring of the party’s panel of spokespersons but, given that her successor was to be elected shortly, had left the official announcement to be made by the new party chief, leaving enough room for him to make changes if he so desired. However, even that formality of announcing the revamped team of party spokespersons has been awaiting Kharge’s nod.

Also read: Gehlot-Pilot turf war returns to haunt Congress; Kharge has his task cut out

As a result, party briefings have largely been left to communications department chief Jairam Ramesh, his two deputies, Pawan Khera and Supriya Shrinate, party leaders Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Gourav Vallabh and Anshul Avijit. On rare occasions, Congress leaders engaged in the Gujarat campaign or others, like Kanhaiya Kumar, are available to address the media on specific issues either concerning the Gujarat assembly polls or the ongoing Bharat Jodo Yatra. Interestingly, Vallabh had resigned as party spokesperson when he volunteered to be one of Kharge’s campaign managers during the presidential election – when he was officially reinstated as spokesperson remains a mystery.

Coordinators appointed

The only appointments of any consequence that Kharge has made after assuming the presidency were of the four coordinators attached to his office. These were Rajya Sabha MP Syed Nasir Hussain, Pranav Jha, Gurdeep Singh Sappal and Gaurav Pandhi. The inclusion of Hussain, who like Vallabh was also Kharge’s campaign manager, say party sources, was on account of his close rapport with the Congress chief – the two also belong to the same state. Jha is an old hand from the party’s communications department.

However, the inclusion of Sappal and the 36-year-old Pandhi has left many within the Congress surprised as both are lateral entrants to the party, lacking any significant organisational experience or stature. Their inclusion as coordinators for the office of the Congress president, party sources say, is largely to ensure a clear line of communication between the Gandhis and Kharge. Sappal, a former chief executive officer with the Rajya Sabha TV, is known to be a resourceful media manager who also enjoys a good working relationship with the Sonia-Rahul-Priyanka troika as well as several other senior party leaders. Pandhi is known for his skills with social media and his proximity to those working closely with Rahul.

Though Congress insiders admit that Kharge is an “approachable party president whose doors are always open for discussions with colleagues”, they also say that this ready availability “means little” if the expectation of an extensive organisational overhaul was not met with a sense of urgency. “Nearly a month has gone by since he took charge. Barring an election rally in Himachal, appearances at party functions like the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Lecture (delivered by Purushottam Agrawal on November 14) or his criticism of the Modi government on Twitter, there is nothing of any particular consequence that Kharge has achieved so far. It almost seems like he wants the party to remain stuck in the very status quo that his election was supposed to alter,” said a Congress Lok Sabha MP.

During the Congress presidential election, Tharoor had warned party colleagues in the electoral college that a vote for Kharge would be a vote for status quo. Though polling an impressive and unexpected 1,072 votes, Tharoor lost the election to Kharge who got an overwhelming 7,897 votes in the party’s electoral college. The minimum expectation that those who voted for Tharoor had was that the Thiruvananthapuram MP, ostensibly popular among the younger lot of Congress leaders, would not be left high and dry within the party as punishment for challenging the unofficial candidate of the Gandhi family. However, Tharoor has been given no significant organisational role yet by Kharge; he was kept out of the steering committee and his name did not figure in the list of Congress’s star campaigners for Gujarat.

It is, of course, still very early days to pre-empt how Kharge’s presidential stint eventually pans out. However, by taking his own time to settle into the ominous job he has been thrust into a time that is critical to the Congress’s political survival, and by showing a proclivity for embracing the inertia that he was supposed to rid the Grand Old Party of, Kharge seems to have got off to a wrong start.

Also read: PM yet to acknowledge the epic failure of demonetisation move: Kharge

AICC plenary

In less than a month’s time, results for the Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat polls will be announced. Though the Congress is hopeful of wresting Himachal from the BJP, it knows an electoral upset is imminent in Gujarat. Soon after the poll results, the party will have to get down to planning the AICC plenary where Kharge’s election as party chief needs to be ratified and during which many party leaders expect Kharge to announce some big-ticket organisational reforms, including elections for seats at the high table of the CWC.

It may be perfectly justified for Kharge to hold on to announcing any major reforms till the plenary, but before that he needs to lay the groundwork for such reforms, show his party colleagues that he means business and prove that Tharoor’s likening of his victory to a strengthening of status quo was off-the-mark. So far, Kharge has failed to do any of this.