After poll debacle, Congress struggles to put its troop on task
Within days of its humiliating rout in the recent round of assembly polls, Congress president Sonia Gandhi had asked chiefs of her party’s units in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur to resign. The alacrity in holding the state leadership to account for the poll losses, coinciding with attacks on the party’s first family for its inability to steady the Congress’s sinking ship, had given the impression that Sonia was finally serious about executing a long-delayed course correction for her party.
But then, old habits, they say, die hard. The inability to crack the whip on feuding factional leaders and addressing deepening organisational inertia has been a habit that the Congress high command has nursed for decades now. And so, after the initial swiftness in seeking resignations of state-unit chiefs and calling meetings for a preliminary assessment of reasons for the poll debacle, the Congress, in these states, has again slid back into the comfort of blissful torpor.
No formal discussions yet
More than 18 days have past since the results. The Congress is yet to hold formal discussions with its newly elected MLAs in Punjab, Uttarakhand, Manipur and Goa to elect leaders of the legislative party in the respective state assemblies. In the meanwhile, first sessions of the newly convened assemblies in Punjab and Manipur – albeit largely to elect the Speaker and for swearing-in of newly elected MLAs – have already concluded. Assembly sessions for Uttarakhand and Goa are scheduled to begin on March 29 while the Uttar Pradesh assembly began its session, on Monday (March 28), with newly-elected MLAs taking oath.
A party leader from UP, where the Congress finished with just two MLAs, joked, “In UP we don’t have to choose a party leader for the assembly because we have just two MLAs but knowing how we work, you can expect them to start fighting amongst themselves anytime.” In Manipur, the Congress can’t stake claim for the post of Leader of Opposition as it won just five of the state’s 60 assembly segments against 32 seats of the ruling BJP. However, the party still needs to choose a leader among the five MLAs.
Sources within the Congress attribute the delay in choosing the legislative party leaders to “intense lobbying and infighting”, despite the miserable poll performance.
In Uttarakhand, the Congress improved its 2017 tally of 11 seats marginally and bagged 19 seats in the recent polls. The party’s PCC chief, Ganesh Godiyal, as well as the face of its campaign, former CM Harish Rawat, both lost the election from the Srinagar and Lalkuan constituencies respectively. Otherwise, one of the two leaders who could have been the obvious choice to lead the party’s legislative bloc.
Crowded race
A senior Uttarakhand Congress leader who too lost the election told The Federal, “It’s an open house now and almost every second Congress MLA wants to become Congress Legislative Party leader (and de facto the Leader of Opposition)… if not Congress Legislative Party leader, they will lobby to become chief of Pradesh Congress Committee.” The leader said that Chakrata MLA Pritam Singh, who was made leader of opposition last year, wants the party to continue in the post “though he was as responsible as Harish Rawat for our defeat because he was PCC chief till six months back and did nothing to revive the party”.
An Uttarakhand Congress MLA conceded that the race to win the Congress Legislative Party (CLP) leader’s post was a very crowded one. He said Bajpur MLA Yashpal Arya, who returned to the Congress just before the election and barely won his seat, is “lobbying hard for one of the two posts while others in the race included Almora MLA Manoj Tewari, Dharchula MLA Harish Dhami, Bhagwanpur MLA Mamata Rakesh and Bhuwan Kapri, who defeated chief minister Pushkar Dhami in the Khatima constituency.”
Devender Yadav, the Congress in-charge for Uttarakhand, denied rumours of infighting within the party. Yadav said the delay was only because the party leadership wants to “make an informed choice through consensus and appoint someone who can keep the government on its toes… the Congress president has also appointed observers in the five states to hold discussions on these appointments and the reasons for our defeat and report to her at the earliest after which these decisions will be taken.”
Criticism over appointments
On March 16, Sonia Gandhi had assigned Rajani Patil, Jairam Ramesh, Ajay Maken, Jitendra Singh and Avinash Pandey to Goa, Manipur, Punjab, UP and Uttarakhand respectively and directed them to “assess the post-poll situation and suggest organisational changes” after holding talks with MLA candidates and important party leaders of these states. The appointments themselves had raised a stink among a section of party leaders from these states as well as within the so-called G-23 group of Congress rebels who claimed that leaders like Maken, Ramesh and Pandey were equally responsible for the poor results as they had been involved in the candidate selection process.
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Patil and Ramesh are both Rajya Sabha MPs and with Parliament in session, they have had no time to visit Goa and Manipur respectively to carry out the tasks assigned by Sonia. Party sources say Maken, Pandey and Singh too have done precious little besides speaking to a handful of leaders from the states they have been assigned to.
As a result, the stalemate over who will lead the party in the respective state assemblies and party units has continued. Like in Uttarakhand, in Punjab, the only poll-bound state where the Congress was in power before the Aam Aadmi Party’s historic 92-seat victory, the two obvious candidates for leading the CLP – former chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi and sacked PCC chief Navjot Sidhu – lost their re-election bids to AAP candidates. As such, the Congress now has to choose its CLP leader from one among the 18 candidates who managed to survive the AAP tsunami.
When it propped up Channi as the CM after benching Amarinder Singh, the Congress had hoped that by giving the state its first-ever Dalit Sikh CM, at the risk of alienating the formidable Jat Sikh and Hindu voters, it would reap a rich electoral harvest owing to the over 32 percent Dalit population of Punjab. The results proved that this was just a pipedream. Channi suffered a humiliating defeat from both seats he contested.
In choosing the new Punjab Congress Chief and the CLP leader, the party high command now has the tough task of ending the caste identity anxiousness that it caused during the elections while also ensuring that its choices don’t end up signalling that the party no longer wants to strengthen Dalit leadership in the state.
A senior party leader from Punjab said former deputy chief minister and Dera Baba Nanak MLA Sukhjinder Randhawa, Bholath MLA Sukhpal Singh Khaira (he had won the last election as an AAP candidate and served as LoP briefly before defecting to the Congress), Gidderbaha MLA Amarinder Singh Raja Warring, controversial Kapurthala MLA Rana Gurjeet Singh, Jalandhar Cantt MLA Pargat Singh (a close aide of Navjot Sidhu) and Qadian MLA Partap Singh Bajwa are all lobbying to be named either PCC chief of CLP leader.
Also read: Congress sinking: Muddled ideology, work-from-home strategies & inertia
In Goa, where the Congress won 11 of the 40 assembly seats against the BJP’s 20, the high command has a different task. It not only has to appoint a CLP leader and new PCC chief but also has to ensure that its already thin legislative strength doesn’t get depleted further to defections because of betting on the wrong horse.
Party-hopping in Goa
Party-hopping isn’t a term restricted to bohemian travellers revelling on the beaches of Goa. In the state’s politics, it assumes a different meaning as Goa is infamous for fickle ideological commitment of its lawmakers. Goan MLAs have, for long, taken the lead over their counterparts from Haryana, the state that once characterised India’s Aaya Ram, Gaya Ram politics. In the run up to the Goa elections, the Congress’s biggest catch was former minister and BJP stalwart from north Goa, Michael Lobo. Lobo joined the Congress, got tickets for himself, his wife and three other loyalists and ensured all of them won. Now, with Lobo and his aides constituting a bloc of five out the Congress’s 11 MLAs in Goa, he wants the party to trust him with the crucial responsibility of either CLP leader or PCC chief.
Lobo’s challenger is former Goa CM and Margao MLA Digambar Kamat, who many in the party’s state unit hold responsible for the poor poll performance. Girish Chodankar, who presided over the party’s decimation in the state and has since been sacked as Goa Congress chief, is also a Kamat confidant. Sources told The Federal that despite the litany of complaints within Goa Congress against Kamat, the Margao MLA is still lobbying for the CLP leader’s post.
Party sources say the crucial appointments are unlikely to be made before the current session of Parliament ends on April 8. In the absence of PCC chiefs to lead the state unit and CLP leaders in Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa or even Manipur, the Congress organisation is clueless on what its strategy should be to counter the decisions being taken by the newly elected governments.
But then, the Grand Old Party, one may argue, was clueless even when it had leaders in these positions or the poll results wouldn’t have been what they were. At least inconsistency isn’t something the Congress can be accused of, right?
