Congress election: Clarity on contenders remains elusive as Gandhis weigh in options

With just 10 days to go before the Congress party issues a notification, kick-starting the process to elect its new president, clarity on the likely contenders for the contest remains elusive.

A substantial chunk of the party brass remains keen on Rahul Gandhi returning to the helm. However, sources close to the Wayanad MP, who is currently on his Bharat Jodo Yatra, maintain that he is adamant about the need for the Congress to not only be led by a  non-Gandhi but preferably one who also belongs to the Dalit or backward caste community.

Addressing the media in Puliyoorkurichy, on Friday (September 9), Rahul was cryptic in his response to questions on his return to the party’s presidency. “Whether I become president or don’t become president, this will become very clear when the election takes place… if I don’t stand, then you can ask me a question, why didn’t you stand and I will answer the question,” Rahul had said, adding that he had “very clearly decided in my mind what I am going to do.”

 Gandhis banking on ‘reluctant’ Gehlot

Rahul’s steadfast refusal to enter the party’s presidential contest had, last month, forced his mother and interim party chief Sonia Gandhi to urge Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot to stand for the election. However, it is learnt that the Gandhis have now been forced to look for options beyond Gehlot even though he remains their preeminent choice for the unenviable job of steering the Congress through what is largely seen as the toughest period in its 137-year history.

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Sources say if the Gandhis fail to convince Gehlot to accept the gauntlet, they may put their weight behind one of three leaders. These include Mukul Wasnik, who was relieved earlier this week by Sonia of his duties as the party’s in-charge of the Madhya Pradesh desk, Mallikarjun Kharge, the leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha and Rahul-confidant KC Venugopal, presently the all-powerful general secretary in-charge of the Congress organisation.

Sources said Sonia’s offer to back the 71-year-old Gehlot was based on several politically pragmatic calculations. A two-term chief minister with vast organisational and electoral experience (he has been an MP and an MLA for five terms each), Gehlot is a die-hard party and Gandhi family loyalist and comes from a backward community. He also enjoys a good rapport with most factions of the Congress, including leaders who are presently viewed within the party as rebels against the hegemony of the Gandhis. His elevation would have also paved the way for his rival, Sachin Pilot, to be anointed Rajasthan Chief Minister a year ahead of assembly polls in Rajasthan.

However, Congress sources say Gehlot has been resisting efforts to push him up the organisational ladder. He has, instead, been insisting that none other than Rahul should succeed Sonia as party chief. It is learnt that Gehlot is willing to accept Sonia’s offer on the condition that he is allowed to either stay on as Rajasthan Chief Minister or have one of his nominees succeed him in the role. The condition obviously puts a spanner in the plans of the Gandhis to pivot Pilot to the Chief Minister’s chair.

Sources said that in his bid to ensure that he doesn’t lose his chief ministerial throne even if he is forced to contest the Congress president’s election, Gehlot has reached out to some media outfits with a strong presence in Rajasthan to “publicise the good work being done by the state government under his leadership and project him as the only leader who can ensure a Congress victory in next year’s assembly polls”.

Also read: Election for new Congress president to be held on Oct 17

A senior minister in the Gehlot cabinet also told The Federal that Gehlot has “instructed all ministers and the senior bureaucracy to fast track completing the party’s unfulfilled poll promises and come up with ideas for populist schemes that can be rolled out without much delay”.

A sign of this came on September 9 when Gehlot launched his government’s Indira Gandhi Urban Employment Guarantee Scheme that promises 100 days of employment annually to registered beneficiaries between the age of 18 and 60 years who reside in the state’s urban areas and are not covered under the existing centrally-sponsored MGNREGA scheme.

Gehlot’s shenanigans have forced the Gandhis to look for other potential candidates, say sources, though efforts are still on to bring him on board without sacrificing Pilot’s ambitions and risking another rebellion in the Rajasthan Congress. This is where Wasnik, Kharge and Venugopal come into play.

Who will fit the complex mosaic?

The problem for the Gandhis, though, is that backing any one of these three will present its own set  of challenges. The 62-year-old Wasnik, a Dalit, is an experienced hand who has served four times as a Lok Sabha MP from Maharashtra and is presently a Rajya Sabha member. He has also served within the party as a general secretary and member for the Congress Working Committee for years and as president of the party’s frontal organisations – the Indian Youth Congress (1988-1990) and the National Students Union of India (1985-1988).

Wasnik’s name for the Congress presidency had also cropped up when Rahul resigned from the post after leading the party to its rout in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. A year later, it came as a surprise to many that Wasnik was among the 23 leaders – the G-23 – who signed a letter to Sonia demanding a full-time, effective and visible leadership. However, within a month of the G-23 letter bomb, sources say Wasnik had been co-opted back to the Nehru-Gandhi loyalists’ fold. He has since been appointed to various intra-party panels set up by Sonia and was also given a Rajya Sabha berth from Rajasthan in June this year.

Though the G-23 is now greatly diminished in strength – its most vocal members, Ghulam Nabi Azad and Kapil Sibal have quit the party as have others like Jitin Prasada and Yoganand Shastri – it is learnt that the few who remain with the Congress see Wasnik with suspicion.

“If the Gandhis think him to be their loyalist and want to push him for the presidency, they should know that Mukul works only for himself. He was largely sidelined in the party when he signed the (G-23) letter but look at his rise since… he is now a Rajya Sabha MP, continues to be a CWC member… if the Gandhis believe that they will be able to control the party through him, they are mistaken,” a G-23 member told The Federal.

Some in the party believe that promoting the 80-year-old Kharge, a Dalit, may help the party’s victory prospects in next year’s Karnataka assembly polls. Conversely, there is also a view that his elevation could complicate further the intra-party power arithmetic in the southern state where the Congress is trying hard to isolate itself from any adverse impact of the rivalry between DK Shivakumar and Siddaramaiah.

Also read: Made my decision, will reveal during elections: Rahul on being Cong chief

Though a loyalist of the Gandhi family and a trenchant critic of Modi and the BJP, Kharge is already leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha and the high command doesn’t seem keen to relieve him from that role just yet.

Kharge and Venugopal both belong to the southern states of Karnataka and Kerala respectively. A dominant view within the Congress is that the party has been ignoring representation in key roles from the Hindi heartland states despite facing its greatest electoral challenges against the BJP in this belt. The Congress’s leader in the Lok Sabha is Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury from Bengal, while Kharge is LoP in the Rajya Sabha and Venugopal is in-charge of the party organisation.

Even Rahul is currently an MP from Kerala’s Wayanad and has, since his defeat in Amethi, left the affairs of electorally crucial Uttar Pradesh to his sister, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who is back to her work-from-home style politics since leading the Congress to its humiliating two-seat victory in this year’s Uttar Pradesh assembly polls.

‘Cong needs team player, not snob’

For Venugopal, matters are even more problematic. A key aide of Rahul, Venugopal is deeply resented within the Congress organisation. Party sources say most PCC chiefs, MPs and AICC office bearers find dealing with Venugopal difficult as he is “arrogant, inaccessible and has no understanding of party’s affairs”. That he trails Rahul like a shadow and allegedly keeps even senior party members, MPs and office bearers from meeting Rahul or Sonia is another cause of bitterness against Venugopal, say sources.

It would be expected of anyone who becomes the party chief to not just carry different factions of the organisation along and but also be a good communicator, at least in Hindi and English as the president will need to address poll rallies and press conferences. “Venugopal lacks these skills – he is not a team player and his communications skills are practically non-existent… he can’t even read a prepared statement in English without fumbling a few times and his understanding of Hindi is very limited; how do you expect him to address rallies for the party,” a senior Congress MP told The Federal.

The Gandhis are also aware that the forthcoming election for the party’s presidency may not follow the two-decade-long precedent of a candidate – first Sonia, then Rahul – winning by consensus. G-23 members such as Shashi Tharoor and Manish Tewari are reportedly mulling their options of entering the contest. There are indications that one or more leaders may challenge whoever is backed in the presidential election by the Gandhis.

Also read: Bharat Jodo Yatra is just band-aid for existential crisis of Rahul and Congress

A row over the lack of transparency in the poll process because of non-publication of the electoral rolls has already embarrassed the party. At least five congress MPs– Tharoor, Tewari, Pradyot Bordoloi, Abdul Khaleque and Karti Chidambaram – had asked party’s election authority chief Madhusudan Mistry to make the electoral rolls public. Mistry has now said that anyone who wishes to contest the CP polls can get a copy of the electoral rolls from his office at the AICC once the notification for the election is issued on September 20. Additionally, to avoid the taint of bogus voters on the electoral rolls, the party has also, for the first time, issued all 9000+ delegates to the Electoral College QR coded identity cards.

Congress sources say if Rahul remains adamant about not contesting the polls then a candidate backed by the Gandhis will win comfortably. However, a poor choice of nominee by the high command could end up in a keen contest if reform-seekers like Tharoor, Tewari and others actually marshal disgruntled leaders in favour of a candidate who will dare to challenge the Gandhis’ choice. With less than a fortnight to go before the poll process begin; the Gandhis neither have the luxury of time to soothe frayed nerves nor a wide pool of leaders to choose an acceptable, consensus candidate from.