Congress clips wings of ‘letter writers’ in new appointments

NEW DELHI: Two days after a stormy CWC meeting, the Congress leadership on Thursday sent out a strong statement of intent by curbing the role of “letter writers” in Parliament even as Ghulam Nabi Azad, one of the leading lights among the dissenters, reiterated the demand for elections to the working committee.
Congress appointed younger MPs Gaurav Gogoi as deputy leader and Ravneet Bittu as whip in the Lok Sabha, ignoring Shashi Tharoor and Manish Tewari who were part of the group of 23 who wrote to party chief Sonia Gandhi calling for “full-time and effective leadership” besides an elected CWC and constitution of a parliamentary board.
At the same time, Congress constituted a group of 10 leaders to deal with issues coming up in Parliament. This panel includes Azad, who is leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha, and deputy leader Anand Sharma, who was also a signatory, as well as loyalists Ahmed Patel, Jairam Ramesh and K C Venugopal. Ramesh was also appointed chief whip in the RS. It also has five MPs from the Lok Sabha led by leader of the party in the House, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury. But here, too, carving of a larger group appeared to dilute the autonomy that Azad and Sharma had enjoyed till now in the Upper House.
Azad’s comments, however, seemed to point to a widening rift. Striking a defiant note, he told ANI, “I don’t have any problem with this (Rahul becoming party chief)... whosoever becomes president should be elected. Rahulji was elected for five years but he resigned and we had to elect an interim president.” The emphasis on “elected” appeared significant as the dissenters have been calling for inner party democracy and in the past, the party chief's post has sometimes been contested.
Asked about his demand for elected posts in the party and an elected CWC, Azad said, “Those people are raising questions on elections in the party who have fear of losing their posts. I contested elections for CWC member twice and got elected. What is the harm in elections? I was elected as CWC member even though the party president (on an earlier occasion) openly announced that members should not vote for me.”
The decisions announced on Thursday came on the back of the committee formed on Wednesday to finalise the party’s stance on the Centre’s ordinances. It also included Jairam Ramesh and Digvijaya Singh from the Rajya Sabha but none of the House leaders.
However, uncertainty prevailed over the state of factional play as Azad went public justifying the action of writing the letter with a clutch of demands that were criticised heavily and rejected in totality by CWC members.
While Azad appeared to go on the offensive, sources in Congress said the dissenting group has been conciliatory in its conversations and the comments may just be for public consumption.
Azad, however, said, “It’s our victory that after six months, we will have a full-time president.” Asked why he wrote a letter instead of discussing the issue in the CWC, he said, “Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Patel used to write letters to each other even though they were in the same building of South Block. I am not like them but it’s just a way to raise concerns.”
Denying that his dissent was motivated by personal reasons, the senior MP said, “I want that the party should be built up. It is for the first time that we don’t have a leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha for 10 consecutive years.”