Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, March 15: In a move that best be described as “locking the stable after horse has bolted,” the interim Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday ordered the chiefs of the five state units where the party has suffered humiliating defeats, to quit to make way for revamping the organisational set ups.
Calling the move the first step towards “reorganisation,” the Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala tweeted that the resignations were sought to “facilitate the reorganisation” of the state Congress units. “Congress President, Smt. Sonia Gandhi has asked the PCC Presidents of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Goa & Manipur to put in their resignations in order to facilitate reorganisation of PCC’s,” Surjewala said. Navjot Singh Sidhu, who took over as Punjab Congress chief eight months ago, is among the leaders asked to resign.
Two days after the five hour long CWC meeting which was held on Sunday, the Congress Working Committee had decided that Sonia Gandhi would remain chief and authorized her to take effective and immediate steps to address organisational issues, even as some of the rebel leaders of the “Group of 23” suggested the Gandhis to make way for a leadership change at the top.
The Congress was swept by Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Punjab and failed to put up a credible fight in the remaining four states where it had hoped for a comeback or even manage a close contest with the BJP. Besides a poor show in Uttar Pradesh, the grand old party has also lost Uttarakhand, Goa, Manipur and was wiped off in Punjab which was one of the last three states where it was in power. After months of infighting between Navjot Sidhu and Amarinder Singh and their replacement in the form of state’s first Dalit CM Charanjit Singh Channi, the Congress collapsed in assembly elections in Punjab, the worst loss among the five states.
Soon after, Uttarakhand Congress president Ganesh Godiyal resigned from the post. Taking to Twitter where he posted his resignation letter, Godiyal wrote, “Taking moral responsibility for the party’s defeat in the State Assembly elections, I have submitted my resignation today.”
Sonia Gandhi’s move is a follow-up to the Congress leadership meeting on Sunday to discuss the latest poll drubbings. In her speech to senior leaders at the Congress Working Committee (CWC)’s poll post-mortem, Sonia Gandhi offered to resign along with her children Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.
Gandhi presented the resignation offer as “sacrifice by her family in the interest of the party” and as expected, was forthwith “unanimously rejected” by the leaders present. “Congress interim president Sonia Gandhi said she along with her family members Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra are ready to sacrifice their posts for the party, but we all rejected this,” senior leader Adhir Ranjan Choudhary had said. Rahul Gandhi, however, does not hold any post in the party after he quit as Congress president owning responsibility for the Congress’s 2019 national election drubbing.
The CWC rejected her offer to make any and every sacrifice for the party, which was construed by some as an offer of Gandhi family to step aside, and reposed faith in her leadership. “We will fight on. We will overcome. We will continue to raise your voice,” the party said.
After a four-and-a-half hour meeting, the CWC said Sonia Gandhi would remain party president and authorised her to take “effective and immediate steps” to address organisational issues. The party even put out a video of all its former leaders, including Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, on its Twitter handle, signalling that the Gandhis would remain in charge.
The Congress “dissidents” or G-23 – the group of 23 leaders who wrote to Sonia Gandhi calling for sweeping organisational changes – have been critical of the Gandhis’ leadership and have openly called for a complete overhaul. Former Union Minister Kapil Sibal, a very vocal member of the G-23, said the Gandhis should step aside and give some other leader a chance to lead the party and promptly invited the criticism of “speaking the language of RSS/BJP.”
Those remarks have intensified the “Congress versus Congress” feud that has defined the party since it lost power in 2014 and faced many more election defeats. The infighting in the Congress continued after the CWC Congress Working Committee meet, with the party’s Lok Sabha whip Manickam Tagore on Tuesday hitting out at Kapil Sibal for his remarks against the leadership.
Tagore, a staunch Rahul Gandhi loyalist, said the RSS and the BJP want the Gandhis to be out of leadership position in the party in order to kill the Congress party and destroy the ‘idea of India’. “Why the RSS and BJP wants Nehru-Gandhi’s out of the leadership? Because without Gandhi’s leadership Congress will become Janata party. It’s easy to kill Congress then it’s easy to destroy the idea of India (sic),” Tagore said on Twitter. “Kapil Sibal knows it but why he is speaking the language of RSS/BJP,” he claimed.
Kapil Sibal has said that Gandhis should step aside and give some other leader a chance to lead the party. “Leadership is in cuckoo land… I want a ‘Sab ki Congress’. Some want a ‘Ghar ki Congress’,” Sibal had said.