Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, April 18: Despite a frontal attack on the “Gandhis” by some of the dissident Congress leaders, the party’s interim chief Sonia Gandhi seems to be tightening her grip in the party trying for a “revival” to take on the BJP and the prime minister Narendra Modi in the 2024 Parliamentary elections.
After a crucial leadership meeting at her residence in Delhi on Saturday to rope in the noted election strategist Prashant Kishor, who in the past had helped many of the political parties to show spectacular results, Sonia Gandhi continued with confabulations on Monday with some party leaders to discuss Kishor’s proposals for re-energising the grand old party when the morale of the grass-root workers had reached the nadir after series of electoral defeats in the recent past.
Sonia Gandhi held meetings with select group of party colleagues to discuss the proposal of Prashant Kishor for the revival of the party and its game plan for the 2024 general elections. In her meetings, she also discuss the crucial final call on Kishor’s joining the party — a plan that has once fallen though due to dissent from within.
Mrs Gandhi has continued to take the initiative despite scathing remarks by a prominent leader of the G-23 Group, PJ Kurien of the Kerala Congress who hit out at the former president Rahul Gandhi for his escapist attitude and also slammed the “Gandhis” stating a Congress president need not be always from the Gandhi family. “The president of the party need not be from the Nehru-Gandhi family all the time,” he had said in an interview.
Further slamming the Congress leadership, Kurien said, “Rahul Gandhi resigning as party president shows his instability. When the party went through a crisis, as party president he should have led from the front. “When a ship is about to sink, the captain should not have left it,” he said.
The former Union Minister further said that Kerala Congress leader PJ Kurien has hit out against Rahul Gandhi, saying, “The president of the party need not be from the Nehru family all the time.” He said this while giving an interview to a Malayalam magazine.
Further slamming the Congress leadership, Kurien said, “Rahul Gandhi resigning as party president shows his instability. When the party went through a crisis, as party president he should have led from the front. “When a ship is about to sink, the captain should not have left it.”
The former Union Minister further said Rahul Gandhi should have found a solution after discussing with everyone. “He should have had a meeting with the seniors of the party. Instead of that, he just discussed it with the caucus surrounding him. Those are people who have little experience,” and instead of leading from the front, “he ran after abandoning the ship,” he lamented.
He also slammed the former president for taking all the policy decision despite quitting the post. “The Congress party president post has been vacant since Rahul Gandhi ran away from his responsibilities after the failure in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. But even now, all policy decisions are taken by Rahul Gandhi, which is not correct,” said the senior Congress leader. “A person who said that he does not want the post of the president is taking the decisions and not allowing someone else to take the position. This is not acceptable,” said Kurien. He also said the G-23 did not have any agenda that the party president should not be given to the Nehru family. “We won’t have any problem if Rahul Gandhi becomes party president again through an organisational election. The party should have a full-time president. Congress not having a full-time president is a major problem,” said PJ Kurien.
Kishor’s proposals this time, it is learnt, is to remover the inertia that has set in the party since Rahul Gandhi “ran away” from the president’s office. As per his proposal, the Congress should contest about 370 Lok Sabha seats on its own and for the remaining tie-up with strong regional parties in respective states. Kishor has suggested that the Congress fight alone in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Odisha, and form alliances in Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Maharashtra.
The meeting at Mrs Gandhi’s 10 Janpath Road residence in Delhi is being attended by her daughter and party General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, and senior leaders Mukul Wasnik, Randeep Singh Surjewala, KC Venugopal, and Ambika Soni.
The path for Kishor, however, will not be easy considering that there had been considerable dissent towards him and his proposals in view of his close collaboration with leaders who have been direct competitors to the Congress in the states and have had a fractious relationship with the Grand Old party. Among them are Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, her Andhra Pradesh counterpart Jagan Mohan Reddy and Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao. Kishor’s organisation IPAC had crafted extremely successful election campaigns for both Banerjee and Reddy.
Kishor’s method of implementing proposals may also come in the way. As the party sources indicated that while Kishor favoured a big bang approach, the Gandhis are not keen on ruffling too many feathers among the party’s Old Guard, especially in view of its recent losses in Punjab and states like Goa and Manipur, where it considered itself to be on firm ground. A number of senior party leaders are learnt to be against acting on Kishor’s proposals which would mean giving him a free hand in working out the election strategy and are also opposed to inducing him in the party. Several state-level senior leaders want the party to give them the free hand in the coming elections, particularly in the Gujarat ad Himachal Pradesh state Assembly elections due by the end of the current year, the party sources said.