Gandhis should step aside, give some other leader a chance: Kapil Sibal

Slamming the party’s decision to hold a brainstorming session, he said the leadership is living in “cuckoo land” if it is not aware of the reasons for the party’s decline even after eight years.

Signatory to a letter that 23 senior leaders had written to Sonia Gandhi in 2020 seeking sweeping changes in the party, Sibal is the first senior Congress leader to demand that the Gandhis make way for a new leader. He said the Gandhis should “voluntarily move away” because “a body nominated by them will never tell them that they should not continue to hold the reins of power.”

In an interview to The Indian Express, Sibal said he is neither surprised by the party’s defeat in the Assembly elections nor the decision of the CWC to reaffirm faith in the leadership of Sonia Gandhi. He said a large number of leaders outside the CWC have an entirely different point of view.

“There is a Congress outside the CWC… kindly listen to their views, if you choose to… Lots of leaders like us who are not in the CWC but in the Congress have an entirely different point of view. Is it that we don’t matter because we are not in the CWC? Therefore the CWC, according to them, represents the Congress party in India. I don’t think that’s correct. There are lots of Congressmen around the country, people from Kerala, from Assam, from Jammu and Kashmir, from Maharashtra, from Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, who don’t hold that point of view,” he said.

“I cannot talk on behalf of others. It is purely my personal view that today at least I want a ‘Sab ki Congress’. Some others want a ‘Ghar ki Congress’. I certainly don’t want a ‘Ghar ki Congress’. And I will fight for a ‘Sab ki Congress’ till my last breath. This ‘Sab ki Congress’ means just not getting together, but getting together all those people in India who don’t want the BJP,” he said.

Asked about the chorus of voices demanding the return of Rahul Gandhi as Congress president, he said, “Some people have expressed their views that there can be no Congress without A, B or C. Obviously, they believe that ‘Sab ki Congress’ cannot survive without ‘Ghar ki Congress’. That’s the challenge. This is not against A, B or C.”

“We are assuming now that Rahul Gandhi is not the president of the Congress and Mrs Gandhi is. Rahul Gandhi went to Punjab and made the announcement that Charanjit Singh Channi will be the Chief Minister. In what capacity did he do that? He is not the president of the party, but he takes all the decisions. He is already the de facto president. So why are they asking him that he should take back the reins of power? So they want the de facto president to become the de jure president but it doesn’t matter, he is the de facto president,” he said.

On what the leadership should do now, he said the leadership should have done introspection by now.

“That ‘chintan’ should all have been done… And they should allow someone else to lead. Give someone else a chance. Sunil Gavaskar, for example, had to retire one day. Here, we are not dealing with Gavaskars. Sachin Tendulkar had to retire one day. Until yesterday, Virat Kohli was the captain of the team. The names of all three will be written in golden letters in the cricketing history of the world. They too had to retire. They had to also move away. So if men of great excellence also, at some stage, think that it is time to go, then surely, after the debacles that we have seen, the leadership should leave this space for somebody else who will be elected and not nominated. Allow that person to perform,” he said.