If there’s one factor that kept the top leadership of the Congress still relevant in the face of the total annihilation of the party in the recent Lok Sabha polls, it was its ability to keep the Congress flock together in testing times. So despite the fact that there were voices demanding that the Gandhi scion Rahul who led the party into the elections and thereby into its worst ever poll defeat step down, the elders at the Congress Working Committee CWC demurred and rejected the resignations of both Sonia and Rahul Gandhi. The Congress President Sonia Gandhi was authorized by these wise old men to act as she thought best. Two months since that defeat, little has changed with Rahul Gandhi still effectively calling the shots and the party stumbling from one crisis to another. Dissension is writ large across state units from Haryana in the north to Maharashtra in the west and Assam in the east.
As the Congress heads into another round of assembly elections by 2014 year end, insiders admit that they are reconciled to facing defeat in upcoming state polls in Maharashtra and Haryana. In Jammu and Kashmir where it is in coalition government with the National Conference NC, it is now slated to fight the year end Assembly polls alone as NC does not want to strike an alliance with it again.
Narayan Rane (formerly with the Shiv Sena) has refused to fight under chief minister Prithiviraj Chavan and quit as Industries minister and demanded change of leadership in Maharashtra; the Congress high command is still trying to assuage the senior leader and placate him. In Assam, Hemanta Biswa Sarma the ‘rebel’, state Education minister has quit from the Tarun Gogoi cabinet; he too had demanded change of state leadership. In a deeply faction ridden Haryana unit, veteran Chaudhary Birendra Singh has refused to fight under CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda.
Congress strategists in Delhi confess that the party is staring at huge defeats both in Haryana and Maharashtra; attributed to a resurgent BJP as well as to its own two term anti- incumbency in these states. “There will be no difference to the electoral outcome if we change the Haryana CM at this juncture, we are heading for a defeat we know that,” said a senior party leader.
However, it is shocking how ham-handed the Congress at the Centre has been in its manner of tackling the long brewing dissidence in these states. For over a year, dissident leaders have been rushing to Delhi with their grievances and the party high command has taken little action, almost wishing that these problems would disappear on its own.
Therefore the reasons of anti-incumbency etc. that are now being trotted out by party strategists to come to terms with a loss of Congress governments in all these states and a washout that the party now faces, does not stand to scrutiny. As a senior political analyst said, “After the defeat, these Assembly polls could have been an opportunity for the party to revive itself, to get cracking on strengthening its state units; instead it has totally failed and it seems the fight has already been conceded even before its begun.”
