Congress leaders Shashi Tharoor and Sandeep Dikshit have questioned the failure of top party honchos to elect a full-time Congress president. Rahul Gandhi’s resignation following the Lok Sabha defeat had forced Sonia Gandhi to assume power as interim Congress president, but the party can no longer hide its sense of drift. Some leaders are flagging the inability to arrest BJP’s growing political and ideological hegemony but their ranks aren’t large enough yet to matter. Congress leaders, especially those with some popular following or ideological clarity, must confront the situation as Dikshit has suggested.
In Delhi, a stronghold until 2013 as well as a strong Congress legacy in development during the Sheila Dikshit years, the party was reduced to a pitiable 4% vote share. A dispirited Congress campaign in Maharashtra culminated in a fourth place finish. In recent assembly elections in Delhi, Maharashtra and Haryana, the Gandhis left local leaders to fend for themselves, distancing themselves from potential debacles. Key state units like Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Rajasthan are witnessing stiff factional contestation for the PCC president’s post forcing Sonia to postpone appointments.
With everyone their avowed loyalists, the Gandhi family rules by consensus. But this model has no answers to Congress’s political slide and is incapable of providing astute and energetic leadership to counter the Modi-Shah juggernaut. Rahul, a failure by all yardsticks, remains the most favoured replacement for Sonia. Through the 1990s leaders like Arjun Singh, Madhavrao Scindia, Sharad Pawar, Rajesh Pilot and Jitendra Prasada rose to challenge PV Narasimha Rao and Sonia. In contrast the Congress presidency is now up for grabs for anyone showing ambition. Whether it is apprehensions of sparring with Gandhi family lackeys or the fear of having to cross swords with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and home minster Amit Shah, none from Congress is stepping forward. Such abject lack of ambition cannot be a virtue in politics.
