2024 elections: Congress gets into poll mode, but INDIA bloc glitches remain

Late Friday (January 5) night, the Congress party declared five separate committees to screen candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls. The party has divided the states and Union Territories into five clusters and appointed a chairperson and two members for each. The decision comes close on the heels of hectic poll-related discussions and intra-party appointments, including the recent AICC reshuffle, within the Congress.

The flurry of activity in the Congress camp may suggest that the party has finally recouped from last month’s shock of crippling defeats in the MP, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh Assembly polls and is now preparing for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. Yet, the slew of recent appointments made by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and the discussions on poll preparedness also expose the party’s inherent resistance to drastic reform and a ravenous appetite for procrastinating critical decisions.

The screening committees mark a return to crucial organisational roles of leaders such as Rajani Patil, Bhakt Charan Das and Harish Chaudhary who, less than a fortnight ago, were benched as state in-charges when Kharge effected the AICC rejig. Patil, who was removed as the party’s in-charge for Jammu and Kashmir, will now chair the Lok Sabha candidates screening committee for Gujarat, MP, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Delhi, Daman & Diu and Dadra & Nagar Haveli.

Organisational reshuffle

Likewise, former Union minister Das, who was removed as the AICC in-charge for Bihar, Manipur and Mizoram, has made a comeback as chairman of the screening committee for J & K, Ladakh, Chandigarh, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Uttarakhand and even Uttar Pradesh. Rajasthan Congress MLA Harish Chaudhary, who was removed as AICC in-charge of Punjab but was hoping to be rehabilitated with a key responsibility in his home state, will now head the screening committee for Telangana, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Lakshadweep and Pondicherry.

“It seems those who were found unfit to oversee the affairs of the party in individual states just two weeks ago have now been found worthy enough to screen candidates across several states for the Lok Sabha polls,” a senior Congress MP told The Federal. Another party functionary said the choice of Das and Chaudhary to head different screening committees was “intriguing” since “one (Das) was famously booed out of Bihar by our ally (RJD chief Lalu Yadav, who had once called Das bhhakchonhar, a colloquial word for buffoons) but is now our leadership’s choice for identifying candidates in UP and the other (Chaudhary) ran the party to the ground in Punjab and faced all sorts of allegations from our senior colleagues but will now handle candidate selection for a cluster (of southern states) where we are supposedly well-placed in the elections... best of luck to us”.

The party has also picked Madhusudan Mistry as chairman of the screening panel for the Andhra Pradesh, Andaman & Nicobar, Maharashtra, Goa and Odisha cluster while senior Punjab MLA Rana KP Singh will lead the Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Tripura, Nagaland and Sikkim cluster.

Congress draws flak

The constitution of the candidate screening committees comes at a time when the Congress is being slammed by its partners in the INDIA coalition for delaying negotiations over seat-sharing for the Lok Sabha polls. Though the party’s five-member National Alliance Committee, set up last month to suggest a blueprint for these negotiations, had held an over two-hour-long discussion with Kharge on January 4 and informed journalists that the party was according “top priority” to seat-sharing talks, the Congress president is yet to begin formal negotiations with allies of the INDIA bloc.

The sluggish pace at which the Congress is moving on the seat-sharing negotiations has already drawn sharp criticism from INDIA partners such as the mercurial Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress, Bihar CM Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) and Uddhav Thackeray’s faction of the Shiv Sena. The delay has also allowed room for public spats between allies and given way to unbridled rumours about the paltry number of seats that the Trinamool, Uddhav’s Shiv Sena and Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party are willing to spare for the Congress in their respective states.

None of this, naturally, looks rosy for the INDIA coalition, which is still far from presenting itself as a cohesive and viable electoral alternative to a formidable BJP. It is not surprising that the other parties in the INDIA bloc are losing patience with the Congress. The Trinamool, which had wanted a seat-sharing agreement finalised by December 31, has made it clear to Kharge that though Banerjee is “willing to show a large heart” and wait a while longer for the Congress to initiate the discussions, her party will not join any INDIA event until seat allocations among partners are completed – and she remains steadfast against the Left Front’s inclusion in the alliance in Bengal; a sentiment reciprocated by the Left parties.

“The Congress brought all negotiations to a halt after September because it was too caught up with the Assembly elections in MP, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Telangana. None of the allies objected because it was a valid ground and also since we were led to believe by the Congress leadership that the party was very well placed in those states... the results, of course, were very different but it has been over a month now since the results and there is still no headway; the BJP is already going full steam with its poll preparations, kicking up Hindutva hysteria over the Ram Mandir inauguration,” a senior INDIA bloc leader said.

The INDIA bloc leader added, “All we hear from the Congress is that they are having internal discussions and will come to us soon... on January 4 they had their alliance committee meeting with their party president and we thought they would start the negotiations today but now we are hearing they want to wait till after July 14 because they are busy with preparations for the launch of Rahul Gandhi’s (Manipur to Maharashtra Bharat Jodo Nyay) Yatra... the Congress leadership needs to decide if it wants to have seat sharing negotiations for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls or for the 2029 Lok Sabha polls.”

A senior Congress leader also remarked on the irony of the party’s delay in electorally operationalising the INDIA coalition while going ahead with intra-party appointments and discussions for the Lok Sabha polls. “At the (January 4) meeting of general secretaries, in-charges and state leaders, the Congress president stressed how we have to ensure that the INDIA alliance is successful but then where is the alliance... no one has a clue of how many seats we will contest in states where we have allies or even who those allies will be. Some of the INDIA parties have insisted on having a common minimum program but again no discussion has happened on that because it can happen only after the alliances are finalised,” the leader, a former MP aspiring for a Congress ticket from Uttar Pradesh, told The Federal.

The former MP added, “We have gone ahead and appointed our manifesto committee and screening committees. The manifesto committee has started its consultations but what if their ideas and those of our allies don’t align; what screening of candidates will these committees do when there is no clarity on the seats we will contest.”

Hopes on Rahul's next yatra

The Congress is hopeful that former party president Rahul Gandhi’s upcoming Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra will boost the morale of party workers that has taken a definite hit since the BJP’s recent poll triumph in the Hindi Heartland. Yet, many believe the leadership’s failure to confront equally critical questions regarding the INDIA bloc’s electoral shape, narrative and campaign, or the even more perplexing matter of whether Sonia Gandhi and Kharge will honour the invite to the Ram Mandir consecration has already given the BJP a wide lead over the party and the wider Opposition bloc.

The Congress has yet to articulate whether Sonia and Kharge will attend the Ram Mandir consecration ceremony in Ayodhya on January 22. Though certain sections of the party have indicated that the two leaders will attend the ceremony, others remain unsure of how the Congress will explain such a stance – or, conversely, even a decision to not attend the ceremony position – to its voter base. “Why is the high command building suspense on whether or not it will attend (the consecration). By not responding, we are only helping the BJP; just make the decision public, explain it to the voters and then get the INDIA alliance moving... we have only three months before the poll campaign starts and we are still behaving as if we have three years to prepare,” said another Congress leader.