Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Sept 26: In a bid to keep his arch rival out of power, the man who is tipped to be the next Congress president may have inflicted the death knell on the party in Rajasthan. The rebellion by the supporters of the chief minister Ashok Gehlot has not only plunged the Congress in an unnecessary crisis, it may well pave the way for the return of the BJP to power even before the elections due next year.
If the Speaker, a Gehlot loyalist, accepts the resignations given to him by over 90 Congress MLAs on Sunday if Gehlot or a Gehlot-loyalist was not picked as the chief minister, the Congress government in Rajasthan would be history. “Apparently, that’s not unpalatable to Ashok Gehlot,” a senior Congress leader remarked angrily at the turn of events in Rajasthan. “He will anyway prefer his friend Vasundhara Raje Scindia as Chief Minister to Sachin Pilot,” he quipped.
It also was a clear sign that the party high command and particularly the Gandhis are losing grip on the party and contrary to what he was claiming, Gehlot was no loyalist to Gandhis when it comes to his self-interest. “Put self before the party” seems to be Gehlot’s motto despite his repeated assertions that he was not hankering for any post and want to serve the party at any capacity ascribed to him by the high command.
“It is indiscipline,” an angry Ajay Maken remarked while talking to journalists in Jaipur on Monday morning after the Gehlot-supporters refused to attend a legislature party meeting called by the two high command observers, Maken and Mallikarjun Kharge on Sunday evening ostensibly to adopt a one-line resolution empowering the Congress president Sonia Gandhi to name the successor of Gehlot as the chief minister to allow Gehlot to file nomination for the Congress president’s elections. “To organise a parallel meeting, when the party has called for a formal meeting, clearly amounts to indiscipline,” he said.
Over 90 supporters of Gehlot instead met at the residence of a Gehlot-loyalist minister and despite Maken and Kharge sending them messages to meet them one-to-one to sense their opinion about the leadership choice, they refused.
Instead the group send a three-member delegation to meet the high command observers on their behalf. The delegation put three conditions for adopting a resolution to empower the Congress president to select Gehlot’s successor. The first condition was that the MLAs would not meet the high command observers individually but in groups. The second condition was that the choice of the successor must be put off at least October 19 when the Congress president’s elections will be over and Gehlot himself elected for the post and decide his own successor and the third that the successor must be selected from one of the 102 loyal MLAs of Gehlot and not from 21 supporter of Sachin Pilot.
Gehlot himself, who spent Sunday away in Jaisalmer, claimed that he was “not aware” about the developments in Jaipur. He returned to the state capital late in the evening and held a meeting with the central observers at his residence past midnight only to claim that “nothing was in his hand” and it was the collective will of Congress MLAs to which he had no control.
The “humiliated” central observers refused to accept conditional resolution and headed back to Delhi on Monday morning to report to Sonia Gandhi. The party sources also said Sachin Pilot on the other hand had also called up Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi several times to inform them that he could not take humiliations from the party any more. Like Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Goa and several other states where the Congress was thrown out of power because of internal squabbling, the Congress seems to be headed for similar self-inflicted damages in Rajasthan too.
The rebellion by his supporters may also cause some damage to Gehlot and may cost him shot at the party chief’s post. The Gandhis are reportedly upset at Ashok Gehlot flexing his MLAs and “humiliating” the Congress. Ashok Gehlot is to file his nomination papers for the October 17 Congress president election on Tuesday but no longer may be the “preferred candidate” of the Gandhis.
As the Rajasthan crisis peaked, another senior leader Kamal Nath, who himself was ousted from power in Madhya Pradesh because of his arrogance to hang on refusing any leeway to his rival Jyotiraditya Scindia, who crossed over to the BJP, arrived in Delhi and is likely to mediate between Gehlot and Pilot for peace.
Flagging the MLAs’ demand that any meeting on a new Chief Minister be held only after the next Congress president is elected, Maken said, “It would be conflict of interest as the resolution would be passed when Ashok Gehlot may already be party chief. So, he empowers himself to decide on his own successor in Rajasthan.”
Speaking to the media, Mr Maken slammed the show of defiance, terming it “indiscipline”. The central leaders, it is learnt, feel “upset and humiliated”. The developments appear to indicate that the Gandhis are losing their grip over the party. But some in the party believe the leaders erred in underestimating Gehlot’s sway and also handled the Rajasthan transition poorly.
Mr Gehlot had been reluctant to leave Rajasthan and take on the national role, even suggesting to the Gandhis that he could handle both and should not have to give up the Chief Minister’s job. But Rahul Gandhi publicly slighted him on the double role demand, asserting that the party would stick to a “one person, one role” policy.
Gehlot backed off, seemingly reconciled to his new role, but it was clear he was not about to hand over Rajasthan to his rival Sachin Pilot on a platter. Though he has denied any role in Sunday’s revolt, few believe that Congress MLAs in Rajasthan would take such a big step without his blessing.
Sachin Pilot, whose rebellion in 2020 almost brought Mr Gehlot’s government to the brink, has 20 MLAs on his side. For the second time, he has been publicly “exposed” as without enough support compared to Gehlot.
The developments in Rajasthan in the last two days bringing the party government to the brink is yet another example of the Congress party’s uncanny knack to foist upon itself a crisis when there is none. Instead of solving a crisis, the party creates one for itself and goes out of power. And it is not the first time and maybe not the last. Goa, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, and to some extent Chhattisgarh, the party perhaps has mastered the art of turning a bad situation worse.
The leadership’s ability to find a balance between competing individual interests (natural in any big party like the Congress), intervene in time to iron out differences before a feud erupts into a full-blown crisis, and take decisions and communicate those to the protagonists in a convincing manner has been put to the test again and again.
And the leadership had been found wanting again and again. It is not that there is any dearth of crisis managers in the party. But the point is to avert a crisis as much as possible and not ignite one unnecessarily. The party high command and more particularly the Gandhis have repeatedly failed to iron out the differences and instead drove the party to unmitigated crisis.