Who Leads Congress

The party should waste no time in electing a strong, charismatic leader
A letter written by 23 Congress leaders to the interim party president Sonia Gandhi seeking a full time president and an institutional mechanism to collectively guide the party’s revival appears to have caused further divisions within the party. Political observers will sympathize with these Congress leaders when they say that the uncertainty over the leadership was demoralizing the party workers and weakening the organisation. These leaders want the party to adopt sweeping changes in the way it is run to revive its fortunes and prevent its further drift. They however want the Gandhi family to be a part of the collective decision-making process to restore the party’s glory. However, their decision has not gone down well with the Gandhi family loyalists who have termed them as traitors that intend to help the Bharatiya Janata Party.
This is the biggest upheaval that the party has witnessed since the first rebellion against Sonia’s leadership by Sharad Pawar, Purno A Sangma and Tariq Anwar in 1999 barely a year after she took over the leadership of the party. Sonia overcame the challenge to her leadership as most other party leaders expressed faith in her leadership and continued working with her. She led her party successfully in two parliamentary elections in 2004 and 2009. Since the 2014 Lok Sabha polls the party, first under her leadership and thereafter under Rahul Gandhi, has suffered big reverses. After Rahul Gandhi quit as the president of the party taking responsibility for the party’s poor performance in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Sonia was forced to take over the leadership of the party, though as its interim chief. However, she has not been able to rebuild the party’s fortunes. Even on issues that were vital in the interest of the party she has not been able to do much on account of her health problems. The latest salvo by senior leaders of the party would hurt the party’s prospects ahead of elections to the Bihar legislative assembly which are due in October-November. The party cannot ignore their demand but to its peril.
Though Sonia took over as the interim president of the Congress party following resignation of Rahul a year ago, the party has not been able to find a successor to him. The party has not been able to make amends for its faults that led to it being rejected by the people in the last two Lok Sabha elections. What has cost the party most is its failure to take timely decisions. Now and then, senior party men have been urging the party leaders to end the crisis of leadership, but no concrete steps have been taken. The issue was raised when the party lost Jyotiraditya Scindia with some MLAs in Madhya Pradesh to the BJP and nearly lost Sachin Pilot and his loyal MLAs in Rajasthan. It is absurd that even though Sonia is unable to discharge her duties as president of the party owing to poor health, the section of family loyalists wants her to continue. But how long can she continue?
It was Rahul Gandhi who created the crisis of leadership for the party. His mother, all the senior party men and workers put faith in him when he took over as the president of the party. Where was the need for him to resign after the poor performance of the party in the 2019 elections? The party had got a sizable percentage of the national vote. The number of MPs elected rose only marginally from 2014, but it was still a good number to fight on issues in the Lok Sabha the party considered important. As he does not want to remain president of the party, the organisation should elect a new president. The Congress leadership and Gandhi family loyalists should realise that party cannot afford to defeat Bharatiya Janata Party by taking pot shots at it now and then but by electing a strong leader to take on the might of Narendra Modi. If the Congress wants to be relevant in the current political scenario it has to have a strong and charismatic leader capable of rebuilding the popular support for the party by presenting a credible national alternative to the BJP.