Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, March 10: To use the word “debacle” may be too mild a term for the Congress for its very poor showing in the elections in the five states, the grand old party is actually staring at its existential crisis.
The experts point out that most of the opposition parties have already refused to concede space to the Congress to lead the opposition alliance against the BJP juggernaut. Be it Mamata Banerjee of Trinamool Congress, Arvind Kejriwal of Aam Aadmi Party or K Chandrsekhar Rao of Telangana Rashtra Samiti, each of the leaders have started unifying the opposition camp in their own way but each of them have refused to bring in the Congress in the camp. Most of the opposition parties want to join hands together only to form a non-BJP non-Congress bloc and in the present political scenario, a triangular contest in any election would mean a death knell on the Congress coffin. The massive setback that the Congress has suffered in the Assembly elections in the five states will further embolden fellow parties, particularly the AAP and the Trinamool Congress, to contest the grand old party’s claim and role as the central pole of the Opposition bloc as they believe that the Congress has become irrelevant in the present political stage.
The humiliating defeats are also set to lead to further bloodletting in the party with more and more sincere party leaders and workers leaving the party for greener pastures elsewhere. Even before the first vote was cast in the Assembly elections, there were murmurs in the Opposition camp that the Congress is fast losing its ability and claim, both morally and electorally, to lead the anti-BJP bloc. The results have proved their apprehensions to be correct leaving the Congress to quickly introspect and mend its ways to lengthen its existence. The Congress has been deferring the election for a full-time president to replace the interim Congress president Sonia Gandhi on the elections in the five states. Now that it is over with the Congress bleeding even more than it was earlier, the democratic process within the organisation should begin now to be completed by August-September in time for two more state elections by December including the prime minister Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat. The results are likely to strengthen the anti-Gandhis camp who had been demanding creating collective leadership for the decision-making processes instead of the present conical shape where everyone has to honour the decisions taken by the Gandhi siblings, right or wrong. The change of leadership at the last moment without giving enough time to the incumbent chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi to consolidate is being viewed as the focal point for the Congress rout in Punjab.
There will be calls for putting in place a collective leadership model, a relatively alien concept for the Congress, to undercut the supremacy of the Gandhis. It is to be seen whether any leader other than those who are part of the G-23 would have the courage to speak up and show the mirror to the leadership.
Despite its tall claims, the Trinamool Congress’s Goa dash came a cropper, but many parties in the Opposition, including allies like the NCP and friends like the RJD, feel that the anti-BJP grouping needs a new form in both style, substance and leadership.
Some of the leaders have predicted that the Congress could be heading for a split which, however, seems unlikely as barring perhaps Bhupinder Singh Hooda in Haryana, there are not many leaders in the Congress who have the potential to win 10 or 20-odd seats for the party, leave aside a state, on their own. If they are giving such dismal performance even in the backdrop of the century-old party, it would not be difficult to guess their individual showing outside the party. And this was one aspect which is repeatedly emphasised by the Rahul Gandhi supporters in the party and they are unlikely to yield much grounds to their challengers despite the Gandhi siblings being at the centre-stage of the party’s horror story.
Most Congress leaders have no qualms in admitting that the Congress self-destructed and the number of such leaders are only growing within the party. After the Punjab debacle, many in the party have started openly blaming the Congress central leadership for the party’s continuous disastrous performance in election after election with the party now shrunk to just two states, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh and a junior partner in the three-party alliance government in Maharashtra.
