State scan: Congress looking to make a fresh start in Maharashtra

The party hopes to arrest the downslide by building bridges with the NCP and bringing in new people in the CWC

Congress President Rahul Gandhi recently reconstituted the Congress Working Committee (CWC). He made a lot of changes and many of them glaring, especially so in the context of Maharashtra. 

The reconstituted Committee does not find a place for former Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde or CWC member Vilas Muttemwar. Former Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan, as also former AICC General Secretary Gurudas Kamat, too was omitted.

AICC General Secretary Mukul Wasnik, who has kept a low profile along with another known loyalist Avinash Pande, has been retained. Pande is in charge of party affairs in poll-bound Rajasthan. Neither of them is not known to be a political heavyweight. Former Chief Minister Ashok Chavan is Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) president and has not made it to the CWC because none of the PCC chiefs or Congress Legislature Party leaders has been taken in.

The absence of Shinde, Prithviraj Chavan and Kamat in the CWC or in the permanent invitees list is being interpreted as Rahul searching for a new leadership in Maharashtra. It was the blessings of Rahul and Sonia Gandhi, along with the backing of the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the then senior Minister Pranab Mukherjee, that had resulted in Prithviraj becoming chief minister of Maharashtra in 2010. Then AICC managers hailed it as an “experienced experiment”.

Now, former Youth Congress chief Rajeev Satav has been given charge of party affairs in Gujarat, and former Maharashtra Minister Balasaheb Thorat and former MP Rajani Patil have been made permanent invitees to the CWC. Thorat hails from sugar-rich Ahmednagar district and is a known rival of senior Congress leader Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil, who is Leader of the Opposition in the state. Both are cooperative sugar barons. While Wasnik is a Dalit and Pande a Brahmin, Satav belongs to the OBC category and Rajani Patil, Thorat and Vikhe Patil are Marathas.

Some state leaders angrily asked whether there was a design to weaken Maharashtra by taking lightweight leaders, who represent neither their caste, nor community or nor region, on the CWC so that they toed the high command line.

The Congress, which is going downhill in Maharashtra since 1995, reached its lowest spot in the last Lok Sabha and Assembly polls, in which it secured just two (of 48) and 42 seats (of 288), respectively, four years ago.

Though the party has credibility, it has virtually no mass leader and those who are with it are marginalised. The parting of ways by Sharad Pawar in 1999 dealt such a blow that it has still to recover from it. The growth of high command culture, coupled with the growing one-upmanship, virtually killed the local leadership . Former CM Narayan Rane, who came from the Shiv Sena, left after marginal-ising himself on account of his ambition and failing to adjust to Congress culture.

The Dalits, Muslims and a section of the Marathas have generally backed the party, which, this time, is hoping to face the polls along with Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party. With differences in the BJP and Shiv Sena growing by the day, Rahul apparently believes that a tie-up with Pawar’s party, coupled with bringing in a lot of fresh faces, can help the Congress turn the corner.

A redeeming feature is that the anti-Narendra Modi lineup is growing in Maharashtra. The recent violent protest by the Marathas for reservation is a smoke signal for Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis. Maharashtra is expected to witness a lot of churn in the days and months to come.