Congress Starts Purging The Perceived Dissidents
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
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By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2020-09-07 11:26:37
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Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
View all posts by this Author
The Congress party has started the big ignorance drive. It is ignoring all those who signed the dissenting letter, and their loyalists, while recasting its important committees both at the Central and the state levels. The latest to be ignored are Jitin Prasada and Raj Babbar. Both have been excluded from the four core committees announced by the party for the 2022 state elections in Uttar Pradesh. Earlier last month, the party had ignored the claims of Manish Tiwari and Shashi Tharoor in the Lok Sabha and promoted Gaurav Gogoi and Ravnit Singh Bittu while it had diluted the roles of Ghulam Nabi Azad and Anand Sharma in the Rajya Sabha by constituting a committee of members in the upper house. This clearly shows that the party has taken the letter and its contents on the chin and is not likely to "forget and forgive".
For a party that is beset with dissidence in all states, this is not a wise policy. It has seen Jyotiraditya Scindia leave the party and cause the fall of the Kamal Nath government in Madhya Pradesh. The same thing nearly happened in Rajasthan when Sachin Pilot led the revolt against the Ashok Gehlot government in Rajasthan. The latter situation was patched up for now but a permanent solution has not been found and there is still no love lost between Gehlot and Pilot. Last year, it had seen its alliance with the JD(S) in Karnataka wither away due to dissidence. The Congress might point fingers at the BJP and claim that the ruling party had engineered all these revolts by offering the lure of money and plum posts to defectors. While that might be true to an extent, blaming the whole of it on the BJP and closing its eyes to the systemic defects in the party structure will hasten its ruin.
What the letter writers had pointed out - having a full-time president and holding organizational elections at all levels - are eminently sensible suggestions. When a candidate is foisted on the state unit from the party high command, he or she does not have the backing of the ordinary foot soldiers who feel let down as their local leader is ignored. These foot workers know who has worked for the party and the people and till then, they were busy promoting him. All of a sudden the high command asks them to pitch for someone else. This is turning the ordinary workers and local level leaders against the party. Many have left and many are in the process of leaving the party. But the high command never sees beyond those who are loyal to the family. Salman Khurshid's inclusion in the core committees in UP is a strong proof of that.
