Grip over party remains Gandhis' priority

Rasheed Kidwai
Senior journalist and author

The year 2022 will be critical in the long and illustrious history of the Indian National Congress spread over 137 years. Much more than in 1969, 1977, 1989 or 1996, it’s in 2022 that the grand old party is desperately looking for credible leadership, electoral success and self-confidence. The outcome of the Assembly polls in Punjab, Uttarakhand, Manipur, Uttar Pradesh and Goa will therefore have a crucial bearing on whether the Gandhi trio — Sonia, Rahul and Priyanka — will win a vote of confidence within the Congress parivar. In fact, internal disquiet and the Gandhi family’s anxiety to continue its dominance over the organisation have forced Priyanka Gandhi to stay on Uttar Pradesh turf.

It should be understood that Priyanka’s UP engagements have far less to do with electoral forays than organisational compulsions. One-fifth of the Congress delegates come from UP; they have a say in the election of the Congress president, members of the Congress Working Committee etc. Theoretically, if a revolt against the Gandhis is to gain momentum within the party (just as it had happened against Indira Gandhi in 1969 and 1977), UP, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and other big states would have a decisive role in unseating the incumbent leadership.

Throughout 1992-96, PV Narasimha Rao, who was both Prime Minister and the Congress president, struggled to retain his supremacy over the AICC delegates from UP to curb a revolt. In order to checkmate Arjun Singh and ND Tiwari from Madhya Pradesh and UP, respectively, Rao had employed Jitendra Prasada as political secretary. Prasada had this designation during the era of the then PM Rajiv Gandhi, who too had leaned on the taluqdar from Shahjahanpur (and father of Jitin Prasada, who is currently in the BJP) to keep the old guard, including Pandit Kamlapati Tripathi, under check.

As per the Congress Constitution, 15 per cent of the AICC delegates can requisition an AICC session to discuss leadership issues or force a change. Arjun Singh, ND Tiwari, Sheila Dikshit, ML Fotedar and others who were opposed to the then Congress president PV Narasimha Rao, had tried using this instrument in 1994.

In 1969, a group of senior Congress leaders, called the syndicate, had evicted Indira from the party, leading to a split. An emotional Indira insisted that Congress membership was her ‘birth right’ and that she had been irrevocably born a Congressperson many years ago at Anand Bhawan. “Nobody can throw me out of the Congress. It is not a legal question, nor one of passing a resolution to pronounce an expulsion order. It is a question of the very fibre of one’s heart and being,” she had thundered before bouncing back in the 1971 General Election. However, she had lost control over the party organisation and headquarters at 7, Jantar Mantar Road, New Delhi.

Eight years later, the Congress tasted its first defeat since Independence in the 1977 Lok Sabha elections, resulting in a mass exodus from the party. On January 1, 1978, the then Congress president, K Brahmananda Reddy, expelled Indira from the party. Reddy had the support of many powerful leaders such as YB Chavan, Vasant Dada Patil and Swaran Singh. DK Barooah, incidentally, had earlier coined the slogan, ‘Indira is India, India is Indira’.

A somewhat lonely Indira found a new band of loyalists — Buta Singh, AP Sharma, GK Moopanar, Syed Mir Qasim and Maragatham Chandrasekhar — who had marched to Reddy’s residence to challenge her expulsion. Buta, who was formerly with the Shiromani Akali Dal, spoke harshly to Reddy, demanding to know how Nehru’s daughter could be expelled from the Congress. The 1978 split had cost Indira dearly. Apart from losing the support of 76 of the 153 members of the Lok Sabha, her new party was homeless. It had also lost control over the party symbol of a cow and its calf.

These examples reinforce why Sonia, currently the interim AICC chief, having personally witnessed these phases, has been cautious. Her priority remains having the reins of organisational control.

The current year is set to witness the Congress organisational polls. Usually, the AICC delegates are elected for a fixed term of five years, as per the party Constitution. The list is tweaked and revised before the organisational polls are held. This explains why Sonia and the Gandhis do not want dissenters like G-23 or other disgruntled leaders to have any foothold in state party organisation. The Congress has continued with a Gandhi loyalist, Adhir Ranjan Choudhury, in West Bengal in spite of a dismal performance in the Assembly polls. Kamal Nath continues to hold the dual charge of Madhya Pradesh Congress unit chief and leader of the Congress legislature party in the state Assembly. Across the length and breadth of the country (with few exceptions), handpicked leaders have been chosen to man the state party units. The number of AICC secretaries is nearing 100, while the convention has been not to exceed over 20. Propriety demands that new state heads and party office-bearers should have been appointed after September 2022, when the party polls are scheduled to be completed.

The tenure of the Congress president and the CWC is for five years. The party had amended its Constitution in 2010 to extend the term of its president from three to five years, assuming that the era of Gandhi rule in the party was here to stay. But now many within the Congress think otherwise.