Indian National Congress
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Bharat Jodo Yatra, 2022
Impact on Karnataka elections, 2023
May 13, 2023: The Times of India
From: May 13, 2023: The Times of India
NEW DELHI: With Karnataka giving an overwhelming mandate to the Congress, top leaders of the party were quick to give credit to Rahul Gandhi's Bharat Jodo Yatra, which they said brought to light the "hatred being spread by the BJP" all while "uniting the party, reviving the cadre and shaping the narrative for the Karnataka elections".
In a tweet on Saturday, Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh said: "It was during the Bharat Jodo Yatra, from the many conversations that Rahul Gandhi had with the people of Karnataka, that the guarantees and the promises in our manifesto were discussed and finalised."
He also shared an image, displaying the assembly constituencies that the yatra went through and how the vote of the people changed.
According to the party, the yatra crossed 20 assembly constituencies in the state. In 2018, BJP held 9 of the seats, JD(S) 6 and Congress 5.
After the yatra, when the people went to the polls in 2023, the Congress won 15 of the 20 seats, JD(S) won 3 and BJP 2.
Rahul repeats phrase coined during yatra
Earlier in the day, as the trends made it clear that the Congress was heading to a major victory in the state, Rahul Gandhi said that the people of Karnataka had defeated "politics of hate”.
Addressing reporters at the Congress headquarters in Delhi, Rahul said the Congress stood in support of the poor. "The poor defeated crony capitalists in Karnataka. What I really liked about this election is that we did not fight the battle with hatred. We fought the elections with love," he said.
"I want to thank all the party leaders and workers in Karnataka. Karnataka mein Nafrat ki bazaar band hui hai, Mohabbat ki dukaane khuli hai. We fought on the issues of the poor. We did not fight this battle using hatred and wrong words. This will happen in every state," Rahul Gandhi told the mediapersons.
Rahul Gandhi had coined the 'Nafrat ki bazaar band hui hai, Mohabbat ki dukaane khuli hai' phrase during the Bharat Jodo Yatra which he undertook last year. "Poor people defeated crony capitalists in Karnataka. We didn't fight this battle using hatred..." he added.
'A clear winner’
The Congress said that in the clash of narratives between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the yatra, the cross-country foot march is a "clear winner”.
Talking about the yatra's role in the Congress' performance in the southern state, Ramesh told reporters: "It was the Sanjeevini for the party. It energised the organisation and instilled a deep sense of unity and solidarity among leaders and workers."
"The Bharat Jodo Yatra started a particular narrative in Indian politics which the people of India were waiting for," Congress' media and publicity department head Pawan Khera said when asked about the yatra factor. "In Karnataka, the Bharat Jodo Yatra spent about 22 days. If you remember the visuals of the Bharat Jodo Yatra, Rahul Gandhi being drenched in the rain and continuing his speech in October, I think these visuals have stayed in people's mind," he added.
The Rahul Gandhi-led 'Bharat Jodo Yatra' entered Karnataka on September 30 at Gundlupet in Chamarajanagara district. It passed through Chamarajanagara, Mysuru, Mandya, Tumkur, Chitradurga, Bellary and Raichur, traversing a distance of over 500 kms in about 22 days in the state.
The march had seen massive crowds during its stay in the state with people from all walks of life joining it. It was hailed as a success but many had raised questions over its electoral impact. Many in the party feel it has played a critical role in boosting the Congress' electoral fortunes in the state and its impact is there for everyone to see.
(With inputs from agencies)
Breakaways: parties that emerged from the Congress
1947-2019
February 12, 2020: The Times of India
From:February 12, 2020: The Times of India
From: February 12, 2020: The Times of India
From: February 12, 2020: The Times of India
From: February 12, 2020: The Times of India
See graphics:
Major Congress breakaways over the years, 1951- 1981
Major Congress breakaways over the years, 1994- 2011
In 2014, Trinamool was the most successful breakaway, 2014
Total votes polled for party, Percentage of votes polled in seats contested, Percentage of votes votes polled in states contested, 2014
Congress, which has its roots in India’s freedom struggle, has been around for more than a century. It’s seen every change in modern India’s political landscape and has itself been through several transformations. Interestingly, it also appears to be the nursery for other political parties, spawning no less than 70 parties since independence.
Most of the breakaway parties though are either defunct or have merged with other parties and a majority of the remaining existing parties don’t show much strength in the Lok Sabha polls. But there are three that are really active in Lok Sabha elections — Trinamool, NCP & YSR Congress.
CONGRESS BREAKAWAYS WON MORE SEATS THAN PARENT PARTY IN 2014
Breakaways: politicians who left the Congress
2014- Jan 24
January 14, 2024: The Times of India
NEW DELHI: Jyotiraditya Scindia, Kapil Sibal, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Himanta Biswa Sarma, Hardik Patel, Priyanka Chaturvedi, Sunil Jhakar, Jitin Prasada, RPN Singh and now Milind Deora. The list of leaders who have left Congress and joined rival political parties in recent years is getting longer by the day, signaling a continuing saga of dissatisfaction and unaddressed concerns.
Notably, most of these leaders were once considered close to former Congress president Rahul Gandhi and have publicly expressed their frustration with the Wayanad MP for not addressing their concerns.
On Sunday, a familiar script played out when former South Mumbai MP Milind Deora ended his family's 55-year long association with Congress and joined the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena.
The young leader, who was once a close aide of Rahul Gandhi, was apparently seeking assurance about his political future ever since the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena — or Shiv Sena (UBT) — laid claim to his stronghold of Mumbai South.
Sources close to Deora told PTI that he left Congress after "a very long and futile wait" since the party failed to address his concerns.
Justifying Deora's decision, a close aide said that it is "impossible" to get an audience with Rahul Gandhi, adding that one feels "suffocated" within the party due to the clear disconnect.
Laundry list of unhappy leaders
Deora now joins a growing list of well-known former leaders who decided to exit the party for similar reasons.
Most of these leaders have joined BJP, while some have flocked over to other parties or have formed their own outfits.
The first and the most notable among them is Himanta Biswa Sarma, who became the chief minister of Assam under BJP.
Once he left Congress, Sarma turned into an outspoken critic of Rahul Gandhi and doesn't let any opportunity pass to target the Wayanad MP.
In his long resignation letter to Sonia Gandhi, Sarma had called Rahul "arrogant" and accused the Congress leader of not listening to his concerns.
Former J&K chief minister Ghulam Nabi Azad had voiced similar concerns, saying that Rahul Gandhi “had demolished the entire consultative mechanism of the Congress”. He also called Gandhi "immature".
Other ex-Congress leaders did not attack Rahul Gandhi directly but expressed their frustation over other issues such as lack of internal democracy and a disconnect with the leadership.
For instance, Union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia was angry with the factionalism in the party's Madhya Pradesh unit when he resigned from Congress to join the BJP in March 2020. Scindia said he could no longer take the disrespect coming from veteran Kamal Nath.
His resignation came as a huge setback for the grand old party as it led to the collapse of the Kamal Nath government in MP and paved the way for BJP's return in the state under Shivraj Singh Chouhan.
Sachin Pilot, who was himself on the precipice of leaving Congress due to similar concerns in Rajasthan, decided to stay back in the grand old party despite his concerns going unaddressed. But other leaders didn't show such patience.
In June 2021, former Union minister Jitin Prasada quit the Congress citing the party's growing disconnect with the people. While joining BJP, Prasada asserted that the saffron party is the only real political party in India.
Following this, several other high-profile leaders such as Priyanka Chaturvedi, former Mahila Congress chief Sushmita Dev and former Union minister RPN Singh also quit the party.
Former Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh floated his own outfit and joined hands with BJP after leaving Congress. Others like former Punjab Congress chief Sunil Jakhar and party spokesperson Jaiveer Shergill joined BJP.
Rahul Gandhi has maintained that individuals desiring to leave Congress are at liberty to do so.
Defections from the Congress
2020 – 2024 March
April 4, 2024: The Indian Express
Vallabh expressed disillusionment with the party's leadership, emphasising the importance of ground-level connection and direct communication between leaders and workers.
Gourav Vallabh – April 4, 2024
Gourav Vallabh, a prominent Congress spokesperson known for his expertise in finance and economy, resigned from the party citing its perceived lack of direction and failure to effectively communicate its policies and manifesto.
In his resignation letter addressed to Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge, Vallabh highlighted concerns about the party’s stance on issues such as caste census and its perceived bias against the Hindu community, stating that the party seemed to be moving away from its foundational principles and losing touch with the expectations of ‘New India’.
Vallabh expressed disillusionment with the party’s leadership, emphasising the importance of ground-level connection and direct communication between leaders and workers. He criticised the party’s decision to skip the Ram Temple ceremony, indicating that such actions only served to alienate supporters and demotivate party workers like himself.
Ashok Chavan – February 12, 2024
The Maharashtra Congress grappled with internal turmoil following the resignation of former chief minister Ashok Chavan, along with other leaders exiting the state unit.
While some senior leaders blamed the party’s high command for neglecting concerns like Chavan’s, others attributed the departures to the looming threats of central agency probes and uncertainty about political futures.
Chavan’s resignation, while devoid of public criticism towards the Congress, highlighted underlying tensions within the party, with accusations of mismanagement and dissatisfaction with state leadership. Despite efforts by the central leadership to address Chavan’s grievances and accommodate his demands, speculations persisted about his potential shift to the BJP, fuelling further uncertainty within the Maharashtra Congress.
Milind Deora – January 14, 2024
Former Union Minister Milind Deora’s resignation from the Congress and subsequently joined the ruling Shiv Sena in Maharashtra, on 14 January.
Deora’s departure, amid the party’s efforts to galvanise support ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, underscored underlying tensions within the Maharashtra Congress and raised questions about the party’s ability to retain key leaders.
Sources pointed to internal disagreements and a perceived disconnect between the party’s leadership and its grassroots, highlighting challenges faced by the Congress amidst shifting political dynamics in the state.
Deora’s decision to align with the Shiv Sena was influenced by factors such as frustration with the Congress leadership and dissatisfaction over seat allocation.
Anil Antony – January 24, 2023
The Congress faced internal turmoil as former Kerala Chief Minister A K Antony’s son, Anil Antony, resigned from all party posts following disagreements over his tweet regarding the BBC documentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Anil cited “intolerant calls to retract” his tweet as the reason for his resignation from the party’s digital teams. His decision sparked sharp reactions within the party, with Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh comparing him unfavourably to former CM Oommen Chandy’s son Chandy Oommen, who was actively participating in the Bharat Jodo Yatra alongside Rahul Gandhi.
Anil Antony expressed disappointment with the Congress leadership, stating that he believed the party had no space for him. Despite not discussing his decision with his father A K Antony, he submitted his resignation hoping for acceptance from the leadership.
Meanwhile, the BJP seized the opportunity to criticise the Congress, with party spokesperson Shehzad Poonawala highlighting Anil’s resignation as indicative of the Congress’s lack of tolerance and commitment to free speech.
BJP members praised Anil’s decision to prioritise national interest over party politics and condemned the Congress for allegedly stifling dissenting voices.
Amarinder Singh – November 2, 2022
Former Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh resigned on November 2, 2022 from the Congress and announced his new party, ‘Punjab Lok Congress’.
In his resignation letter to then Congress President Sonia Gandhi, Singh expressed deep disappointment with the party’s decision to appoint Navjot Singh Sidhu as the President of the Punjab Congress Committee. He referred to Sidhu as an “acolyte of the Pakistani deep state.”
Singh cited this as a significant factor in his decision to part ways with the Congress, despite his longstanding association with the party spanning over six decades.
Jaiveer Shergill – August 24, 2022
Congress spokesperson Jaiveer Shergill’s resignation from the party underscored growing disillusionment among party members with the current leadership and decision-making processes.
In his letter to Sonia Gandhi, Shergill highlighted the disconnect between the party’s ideology and the aspirations of modern India’s youth, citing the “dominance of sycophancy and self-serving interests” within the organisation.
Shergill’s departure is indicative of broader challenges facing the Congress, as internal strife and a perceived lack of focus on public interest erode the party’s credibility.
Ghulam Nabi Azad – August 26, 2022
Veteran Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad’s resignation from the party and his scathing critique of its internal functioning had sent shockwaves through the political landscape.
In his five-page letter to then party president Sonia Gandhi, Azad lamented the erosion of democratic processes within the party, citing the lack of organisational elections and the dominance of a select group in decision-making.
He criticised the sidelining of senior leaders and the “emergence of an inexperienced coterie”, attributing the party’s electoral setbacks to a “failure in leadership and strategy” under both Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi.
Azad’s departure marks another significant blow to the Congress, highlighting deep-seated divisions and discontent within the party ranks.
Hardik Patel – May 18 2022
Hardik Patel’s resignation from the Congress, in 2022, followed by his scathing remarks against the party’s leadership, dealt a significant blow to the Congress ahead of the Gujarat Assembly elections.
Patel, who was once appointed as the working president of the state unit, cited disillusionment with the party’s leadership, accusing them of being more preoccupied with trivial matters like mobile messages and catering to the needs of Delhi leaders with chicken sandwiches.
He lambasted the Congress for its failure to provide effective leadership and obstructing key national issues, including the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya and the revocation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir, rather than offering constructive solutions.
The Congress, in response, condemned Patel’s resignation and accused him of colluding with the BJP. Party leaders emphasised that Patel had been given significant responsibilities and questioned his sudden shift in stance regarding contentious issues like the Ram Mandir and Article 370.
Sunil Jakhar – May 14, 2022
Casting serious aspersions on the way then Congress president Sonia Gandhi was handling party affairs, former chief of Punjab Congress Committee Sunil Jakhar quit Congress in a Facebook live video on May 14, 2022.
In his Facebook live video, Jakhar criticised the Congress for its lack of effective leadership and accused the party of failing to address the pressing issues facing Punjab.
Jakhar’s resignation sparked reactions from various quarters within the Congress, with some expressing regret over his departure while others questioning the timing and motives behind his decision.
RPN Singh – January 25, 2022
Singh’s defection from the Congress to the BJP just before the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections in January 2022 had dealt a significant blow to the party.
As a prominent backward caste leader, Singh’s decision to join the BJP not only underscored the challenges faced by the Congress but also bolstered the BJP’s appeal among certain demographics in Uttar Pradesh.
His departure further depleted the ranks of the Rahul brigade within the Congress, following the footsteps of leaders like Jyotiraditya Scindia and Jitin Prasada, who also crossed over to the BJP in recent years.
Kapil Sibal – May 25, 2022
Kapil Sibal’s resignation from the Congress party in May 2022 and his subsequent decision to file his nomination for the Rajya Sabha as an Independent candidate supported by the Samajwadi Party (SP) came as a shocker for the grand old party.
His exit highlighted the struggle within the Congress to address internal dissent and reconcile competing interests, particularly as it navigated its role in the Opposition against the BJP government.
Sibal’s move also reflected a broader realignment within the opposition landscape, as he seeked to unite various political forces against the BJP government’s policies and approach.
Ashwani Kumar – February 15, 2022
In February 2022, former Union minister Ashwani Kumar resigned from the Congress just days before Punjab went to polls. A party veteran, he was the first senior UPA cabinet minister to leave the Congress following its defeat in the 2019 elections.
Kumar’s departure added to the string of exits by leaders from the Congress, including prominent youth faces like Jyotiraditya Scindia, Jitin Prasada, R P N Singh, Sushmita Dev, Priyanka Chaturvedi, and Laliteshpati Tripathi over the past two years.
His resignation highlighted the growing disenchantment among both the old guard and the younger leaders with the state of affairs within the party.
Sushmita Dev – August 15, 2021
Sushmita Dev, the former president of the All India Mahila Congress and a prominent face of the Congress in Assam, joined the Trinamool Congress after resigning from the Congress party. Her departure marked a blow to the Congress, which had seen several young leaders leaving in recent years.
Despite her long association with the Congress, Dev’s resignation reflected growing frustration among young leaders over the party’s direction and decision-making.
Dev’s decision to join the Trinamool Congress came after months of speculation regarding her discontent with the Congress leadership, particularly over issues related to candidate selection and seat-sharing in Assam.
Despite her efforts to address concerns within the party, Dev felt that her political space was shrinking and that her community’s interests were not being adequately represented.
Jitin Prasada – June 9, 2021
Jitin Prasada, the first among the Group of 23 Congress leaders who had advocated for significant changes within the party, departed from the Congress to join the BJP, just ahead of the crucial Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections.
His decision to switch sides dealt another blow to the Congress, already grappling with a continuous exodus of leaders since 2014. As a close associate of Rahul Gandhi, Prasada’s exit, following Jyotiraditya Scindia’s move to the BJP IN 2020, underscored the ongoing challenges faced by the Congress in retaining its young leadership.
Although Prasada’s influence in Uttar Pradesh may not have been as substantial as Scindia’s in Madhya Pradesh, his departure highlighted the deeper issues plaguing the Congress. Despite holding key positions and responsibilities within the party, the Congress failed to address Prasada’s concerns, leading to his defection to the BJP.
Prasada’s shift to the BJP was seen as a strategic move, especially in the context of Uttar Pradesh politics and the BJP’s efforts to consolidate support from various communities. As a Brahmin leader, Prasada’s entry into the BJP appealed to the politically significant Brahmin community in the state, potentially altering the political narrative in favor of the BJP.
Jyotiraditya Scindia – March 11, 2020
In March 2020, Jyotiraditya Scindia, a four-time MP and former Union minister, resigned from the Congress.
His departure, along with at least 22 MLAs in Madhya Pradesh, dealt a significant blow to the then Congress-led Kamal Nath state government, leading to its collapse just over a year after coming to power.
In his resignation letter, Scindia expressed his disillusionment with the Congress, stating that while his aim to serve the people remained unchanged, he believed he could no longer do so within the party.
Despite being considered a potential successor to Rahul Gandhi after the Congress’s 2019 Lok Sabha defeat, Scindia’s exit underscored the challenges facing the party in retaining its young leaders and repositioning itself as a modern political entity.
Fluctuating fortunes
1951- 2021 May
May 12, 2021: The Times of India
From: May 12, 2021: The Times of India
From: May 12, 2021: The Times of India
From: May 12, 2021: The Times of India
From: May 12, 2021: The Times of India
From: May 12, 2021: The Times of India
The bleeding
In national politics, the party has gone from winning 362 seats in 1971 to 41 in 2014 inching up to 52 seats in 2019.
In state politics the performance is no better. It has been swept out of power in most states and in some it’s hanging on to power by a thread—as a small partner to one or several larger regional parties. In Maharashtra, for example, it’s in bed with two unlikeliest of partners—its ideological opposite Shiv Sena, and a party that was carved out of Congress because it didn’t accept Sonia Gandhi as its leader, the NCP. In UP, the Samajwadi Party refused an alliance with the Congress, and in Tamil Nadu, it had to accept fewer seats to be able to stay in the DMK-led alliance.
In most states, once Congress lost power to a regional party it hasn’t been able to come back to power on its own—Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar are examples.
So what went wrong for this behemoth?
Sympathisers say the INC struggles the most when it has to face the might of the BJP, largely because the INC tries to paint itself as a secular party, something the BJP scorns. But in most of the states that went to the polls recently, the BJP wasn’t the INC’s most formidable opponent. Judging by its abysmal showing, the INC is its own worst enemy.
Hollowing out
While INC’s fall is stunning, it’s not really new or unexpected. For decades now, India’s once most powerful political party seems to have lost its way. Critics blame the party’s reliance on one family and one name, and the fact that the inner circle comprises only family loyalists. With little scope for getting ahead politically, MPs and MLAs from the party have no qualms about leaving the INC to join other parties or setting up their own.
A report by poll rights group, Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) found that during the elections held between 2016 and 2020, 170 MLAs left the Congress to join other parties. That’s a whopping 42% of the party’s MLAs, something no party, least of all an already struggling one, can afford.
The list of those who left the INC to form their own parties or to join political rivals is long. While the number itself is damning, what makes it worse for the Congress is the fact that most of those who left were influential people with their own support bases.
Manifestoes
2019
Rahul Offers Liberal Dose Of Jobs & Sops, April 3, 2019: The Times of India
From: April 3, 2019: The Times of India
From: April 3, 2019: The Times of India
Promises Ministry Of Employment & 1 cr Jobs In Villages
Congress has promised to set up a new ministry of industry, services and employment, fill up four lakh vacancies in the government, public sector undertakings and judiciary and work with state governments to create 10 lakh new “seva mitra” positions as part of its strategy to create jobs.
“In the last five years, there has been a dramatic rise in unemployment. Today, unemployment is touching a 45-year high of 6.1% according to the government’s own figures. The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy puts the number at 7.2%. At the end of this February, 3.1 crore people were actively looking for jobs,” Congress said in its manifesto and promised a string of measures to boost employment, which is one of the key election promises of the party.
The issue of jobs has come under the election spotlight as the opposition and the government have exchanged barbs over employment. The opposition has accused the government of withholding data on jobs while the Centre has said that an expanding economy has created a huge number of jobs.
Congress said it would launch two major programmes to be implemented through gram sabhas and urban local bodies that will create 1 crore jobs and this will be through repair and restoration of water bodies and regeneration of wasteland.
As a condition for devolution of funds to the healthcare and education sectors and to panchayats and municipalities, the manifesto said it would request state governments to fill all vacancies, estimated at 20 lakh, in the two sectors and in local bodies.
The party also promised regulatory forbearance for micro and small enterprises and said they would be exempt from all applicable laws and regulations (except the Minimum Wages Act and tax laws) for a period of three years from April 1, 2019 or, in the case of new businesses, the date of commencement of business.
Congress said it would reward export oriented industries through tax rebates and incentives and promised an adequately capitalised tourism development bank to provide low-cost, longterm funds for investment in tourism-related businesses.
Nehru-Gandhi dominance over Congress, 1919-2017
From December 16, 2017: The Times of India
See graphic:
Nehru-Gandhi dominance over Congress, 1919-2017
Other Backward Castes
A history: 1947-2016
Shyamlal Yadav, March 30, 2023: The Indian Express
Independence to Mandal
Political representation for the backward classes, as well as demands for reservation on the lines of quotas for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, began soon after Independence. In 1953, the government of Jawaharlal Nehru set up the first Backward Classes Commission (the expression ‘OBC’ was not in wide use at the time) under the chairmanship of Rajya Sabha member Kaka Kalelkar. The Commission submitted its report in 1955, but no action was taken on it.
Gradually, OBCs in the Hindi heartland moved towards the socialist leader Ram Manohar Lohia, and powered his politics in the early Sixties. After Lohia’s untimely demise in 1967 at age 57, Chaudhary Charan Singh, the Jat leader from Western UP, emerged as the leader of OBCs.
In October 1975, Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna, who was the Congress Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh between November 1973 and November 1975, appointed the Most Backward Classes Commission under the chairmanship of Chhedi Lal Sathi — the first push for an OBC quota in Uttar Pradesh.
Subsequently, in April 1977, the government of another Congress titan, N D Tiwari, who succeeded Bahuguna after a phase of President’s Rule, announced a 15 per cent quota in government jobs for OBCs in UP, perhaps the first such move anywhere in the country.
Within a week, however, Tiwari’s government was dismissed by the Janata Party government led by Prime Minister Morarji Desai, which had come to power at the Centre following the post-Emergency elections of March 1977.
Consequently, it was UP’s Janata government led by Ram Naresh Yadav (1977-79) which implemented the quota — and also took the credit for it.
OBCs, Congress, BJP
In August 1990, the central government led by Congress rebel V P Singh announced its intention to implement the report of the Socially and Educationally Backward Classes Commission, popularly known as the Mandal Commission.
The Mandal Commission had been constituted by the Morarji government in 1978, and its report — recommending 27 per cent reservation for OBCs — had been submitted in 1980, but the governments of Indira and Rajiv Gandhi had chosen not to act on it.
The implementation of the report of the Mandal Commission unleashed a wave of OBC assertion and fundamentally altered the politics of North India. It catapulted leaders like Mulayam Singh Yadav, Lalu Prasad, Nitish Kumar, and Sharad Yadav to national prominence, and sealed the fate of the Congress in UP and Bihar.
In his 2006 biography of V P Singh, Manzil Se Zyada Safar, Ram Bahadur Rai quoted the former PM as having said: “Congress leaders were obsessed with power equations. They were least concerned with the social equations and changes taking place… It was unable to read the Mandal phenomenon. It took a lot of time to understand the importance of coalition power… The BJP has shown more flexibility than the Congress on (striking alliances).”
Indeed, the BJP — at that time still considered a largely Brahmin-Bania party — showed the political flexibility to project OBC leaders such as Kalyan Singh, a Lodh Rajput, in UP, to counter Mulayam. As Mulayam’s support base outside the Samajwadi Party’s Yadav-Muslim core started to fragment, Kalyan rallied smaller OBC communities behind the BJP, eventually forging a non-Yadav OBC vote bank. After OBC leaders like Kalyan and Uma Bharti became rebels within the party, the BJP revamped its leadership at every level to accommodate these communities politically.
Kalyan’s successor Ram Prakash Gupta (Nov 1999-Oct 2000) granted Jats OBC status in UP. In a bid to weaken both Mulayam and BSP chief Mayawati, the government of Chief Minister Rajnath Singh (Oct 2000-Mar 2002) devised a “reservation within reservation” to divide OBCs and Dalits.
UPA govt and later
In 2006, Arjun Singh, the Union Human Resource Development Minister in the UPA-1 government, fought back pressures to push through 27 per cent reservation for OBCs in admissions to central educational institutions, which had been pending since the implementation of the Mandal report. It was one of the biggest decisions in favour of OBCs, and a defining moment in OBC politics — but hardly any gains accrued to the Congress.
In 2010, the UPA-2 government initiated a move for a caste census. Then Law Minister Veerappa Moily wrote to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh about collecting caste/ community data in Census 2011. But on March 1, 2011, Home Minister P Chidambaram opposed the decision in Lok Sabha. Singh’s government ultimately decided to conduct a full Socio Economic Caste Census (SECC) instead.
The SECC data was published by the Ministries of Rural Development and Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation, which conducted the census in rural and urban areas respectively, in 2016. However, the data remain unavailable. The Narendra Modi government has said it is “not reliable”.
There is no precise estimate of India’s OBC population. The National Commission for Backward Classes lists over 2,600 castes in the central list of OBCs for 27% reservation. The Mandal Commission said OBCs were 52% of the population. A report based on the National Sample Survey Organisation’s 61st round, released in October 2006, put this figure at 41%
Presidentship of the party
A backgrounder, till 2021
Sep 27, 2022: The Times of India
From:
From: Sep 27, 2022: The Times of India
NEW DELHI: With Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra deciding not to run in next month's Congress president election, the party seems set to announce its first non-Gandhi chief for the first time in nearly 25 years.
The last time the party had a non-Gandhi president was in 1997 when Sitaram Kesri defeated Sharad Pawar and Rajesh Pilot. Sonia Gandhi took over in 1998 and has been heading the party ever since. Rahul Gandhi briefly served as party chief between 2017 and 2019.
In fact, Sonia Gandhi is the longest-serving president of the Congress since it was formed by British civil servant Allan Octavian Hume in 1885.
Out of the 75 years since Independence, a member of the Nehru-Gandhi family has been at the party's helm for about 40 years. Since 1947, the party has been led by 16 people out of which five have been from the Nehru-Gandhi family.
The latest election will take place on October 17 and the new party president will be announced on October 19.
Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot was widely seen as the favoured candidate of the Gandhi family. The latest political drama in Jaipur, however, has thrown the party into a tizzy.
The only other Congress leader officially in the running at the moment is Shashi Tharoor. Senior leaders Kamal Nath, Pawan Kumar Bansal, and Ambika Soni have so far said they are not interested in heading the party. The window to file nominations for the Congress president poll closes on September 30.
Precedent for giving up CM post for party chief seat There is precedence for a Congress leader giving up his chief ministership to take over as the party president.
In 1968, then Karnataka CM S Nijalingappa (1968-69) gave up his post to become the party president. It was a decision he repented till the end.
In his autobiography, My Life and Politics, Nijalingappa said: "For many reasons, I still repent that decision. It would have been better from all points of view if I had continued as chief minister of Mysore and not accepted this onerous responsibility."
But unlike Gehlot, Nijalingappa was given the option to pick his successor.
In November 1954, Saurashtra CM UN Dhebar (1955-59) was moved to Delhi by Jawaharlal Nehru -- although it was known then that the state would be merged with Bombay, which it did in November 1956. K Kamaraj (1964-67) gave up his chief ministership of Tamil Nadu voluntarily in October 1963 to nationally reinvigorate the Congress as its president. Interestingly, after the 1962 Tamil Nadu assembly election that Kamaraj won for the Congress, and after he handed over the CM's chair in 1963 to M Bhaktavatsalam, the party never formed a government in the state.
The only Congress president who continued to hold the chief minister’s post was Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy (1960-63).
Religion
Secularism versus Hindutva: the debate in 1951
Nalin Mehta, April 3, 2024: The Times of India
Jawaharlal Nehru is a hate figure for the Hindu right today because of his indelible stamp on India’s early direction — one that Hindu traditionalists did not agree with — in the first 17 years after Independence, when he was India’s first Prime Minister and undisputed Congress supremo. Yet, Nehru’s supremacy within the Congress was not preordained. In the first two years of his premiership, he faced such a challenge from Hindu traditionalists within his own Congress party, who were unhappy with his policies on Pakistan and Hindu refugees, that Nehru was forced to resign. The dispute started when Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Hindu nationalist ideologue, India’s first minister for industries and later founder of the Akhil Bharatiya Jan Sangh, which preceded the BJP, resigned from Nehru’s cabinet. He quit the Nehru government over the protection of Hindus left behind in East Pakistan, specifically protesting the Nehru-Liaquat Delhi pact. Under the Delhi pact on migrations between East Pakistan and West Bengal, jointly signed by Nehru and Pakistan Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan on April 8, 1950, both governments agreed to guarantee the safety of religious minorities on their side. Mookerjee, along with another cabinet minister, MC Neogy, resigned from the government in protest the day that Khan was slated to arrive in Delhi.
2018: Temple Run in MP, After Gujarat Karnataka
From: Suchandana Gupta , U-turn in 15 yrs: Triple whammy drives Cong into ‘bhakt’ avatar, October 10, 2018: The Times of India
From: Suchandana Gupta , U-turn in 15 yrs: Triple whammy drives Cong into ‘bhakt’ avatar, October 10, 2018: The Times of India
After Gujarat & K’taka, Time For MP Temple Run
Out of power for three terms, the Congress in Madhya Pradesh has taken a complete U-turn in its election strategy for 2018 — from resisting Hindutva in 2003 to embracing it in 2018.
Fifteen years ago, under Digvijaya Singh, the party had brought Habib Tanveer to stage ‘Ponga Pandit’ throughout the state. Now, Congress is projecting Rahul Gandhi as ‘Shivbhakt’, ‘Ram Bhakt’ and even ‘Narmada Bhakt’.
In 2003, Digvijaya’s ‘Ponga Pundit’ tour was meant to counter BJP, which was taking religious sentimentalism to a crescendo, raising issues of alleged cow slaughter in Vidisha and staking claim to a mosque in Dhar as an ancient Hindu structure.
Congress stuck with its projection of secularism even as BJP announced saffron-clad Uma Bharati as its chief ministerial candidate. Digvijaya resisted any saffronisation of the party unit even as VHP called in Narendra Modi and Praveen Togadia to address public meetings. The strategy did not change much in 2008 or in 2013, when the Modi wave swept the nation.
But three defeats and 15 years later, Congress is suddenly seen in different robes. Rahul is projected as ‘Shivbhakt’ on posters after his pilgrimage to Mansarovar, and ‘Ram Bhakt’ when he is in Chitrakoot. In Jabalpur, he was portrayed as a devotee of Ma Narmada. Even during the Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka elections, the AICC chief was seen temple-hopping — and the party garnered votes wherever he was seen standing with folded hands before deities.
The battle for Madhya Pradesh is more intense, so is Congress’ newly acquired saffron streak. The party promises cow protection, a gau shala in every panchayat and stunned BJP with its announcement of Ram Van Gaman Path Yatra — retracing Lord Ram’s exile in MP. Congress posters show Rahul as a “pandit”, just like his great-grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru.
Rahul’s official campaign started after offering puja at Kamtanath temple in Chitrakoot, where it is believed that Lord Rama spent 11 of his 14 years in exile. A Congress delegation under Harishankar Shukla along with sadhus is presently tracking the route Lord Rama took from Chitrakoot to Amarkantak.
Congress has promised to develop MP into a “religious hub” if voted to power. Kamal Nath said, “BJP uses religion only for political gain but Congress will truly develop the state into a religious tourism hub.”
A senior leader in the state Congress said, “In the last five years, Rahul Gandhi has learnt to answer in BJP’s language. He is actively countering BJP’s Hindutva agenda with more Hindutva. No one can now say he is anti-Hindu. He is strategically attacking Prime Minister Narendra Modi not only on issues of corruption, inflation, unemployment but also on Hindutva.” BJP claims it is unaffected by Congress’ saffronisation. BJP national vicepresident Prabhat Jha took swipe at Rahul, saying, “It is BJP’s credit that Rahul Gandhi has turned a Hindu. He knows now that without support of the majority community, Congress cannot win elections. This is not a threat for us, we are amused. Where is secularism of Congress now? Why has that taken a back seat?”
Jha advised Congress to “do some homework on Hinduism”. “In Jabalpur, the AICC president was participating in Narmada aarti in the afternoon. Congress should have known that aarti is done after sunset. We may not see God everywhere but the Almighty is omnipresent. Maa Narmada knows this was Congress’ chunavi aarti (electoral aarti),” Jha said.
STATE-WISE
Uttar Pradesh
1951- 2017
Chandrima Banerjee, February 18, 2022: The Times of India
From: Chandrima Banerjee, February 18, 2022: The Times of India
From: Chandrima Banerjee, February 18, 2022: The Times of India
From: Chandrima Banerjee, February 18, 2022: The Times of India
From: Chandrima Banerjee, February 18, 2022: The Times of India
From: Chandrima Banerjee, February 18, 2022: The Times of India
From: Chandrima Banerjee, February 18, 2022: The Times of India
From: Chandrima Banerjee, February 18, 2022: The Times of India
From: Chandrima Banerjee, February 18, 2022: The Times of India
From: Chandrima Banerjee, February 18, 2022: The Times of India
For every three seats it had contested then, in 1985, it won two. It was not surprising. Congress had cultivated a dedicated voter base so loyal that not even the Emergency had a lasting impact on who they chose. In seven elections till that point, 95 constituencies had voted for Congress four or more times.
But BJP entered the scene, and then the region-focused Samajwadi Party (SP) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). The Congress footprint started disappearing. It has not crossed 30 seats since 2002 and, in the last assembly election in 2017, it was reduced to single digits — seven out of 403.
Yet, in this downturn, a band of about 10 seats is still holding onto Congress.
Congress had always had a problem holding on to the seats it won. But some of that damage used to be offset with the gain of new seats. For instance, it held on to only 95 of its 211 seats in the 1974 election. Yet, because it also won 119 seats it hadn’t in the previous election, it swung a comfortable 215-seat victory.
How did it come to this?
In 1951, there was practically no opposition to speak of. Congress had won 388 of 403 seats and the painfully distant second, Socialist Party, got 20. For over two decades after that, Congress had an unbroken run of winning the highest number of seats. It didn’t always translate into power. When Congress won 199 seats in 1967, it was by far the single largest party but short of majority in the 425-member House. After 19 days of Congress being in power, a widely divergent group of parties — from Bharatiya Jan Sangh to CPM — came together and formed the government under Congress rebel Chaudhary Charan Singh.
The first big dent to its seat count came in 1977, when Indira Gandhi’s decision to impose Emergency had immediate repercussions. Congress dropped from 215 to 47 seats and ceded space to the Janata Party, which won 352 — almost as grand a victory as that of Congress in 1951. But the precarious coalition that the Janata Party was, it could not hold onto power. In 1980, Congress was back with 309 seats. The next election in 1985, held right after Indira Gandhi’s assassination, also handed a Rajiv Gandhi-led Congress a clear victory. It was the last time Congress won in UP.
The death knell for Congress, however, was sounded by BJP’s emergence as a serious contender. And, specifically, the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. In 1991, Congress managed just 46 seats, one lower than it did in the post-Emergency 1977 election. In a more evident show of disenchantment, its vote share dropped to 17% (nearly half of its post-1977 share of 32%).
Congress has not been able to recover since. In 1991, it forfeited deposits in 226 of the 419 seats it contested. In two elections, 2002 and 2007, it was the party with the highest number of seats where it had to do so. A candidate has to forfeit their deposit if they do not get at least one-sixth of the total votes polled.
As the Hindu vote was slowly consolidated by BJP, the fight for political relevance meant positioning yourself as a viable non-BJP alternative. That space was taken up by strong regional parties like Samajwadi Party (SP), set up in 1992, and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), set up in 1985.
First, the narrow funnel of Muslim votes Congress used to count on was divided between the two regional secular parties. Then, Congress’s share in SC-reserved seats kept shrinking.
Of the 403 seats in the UP assembly, 119 have never made Congress a victor in over 60 years. Another 48 seats have elected a Congress representative just once since 1962. Of the 167 that remain, 115 have chosen Congress four or more times. But there is a clear shift from 1991. At least 37 seats where Congress had been winning consistently stopped voting for it entirely. If the cutoff is moved to 2002, the change is even more stark — at least 62 seats that chose Congress four or more times stopped voting for it.
Who didn’t abandon Congress and why?
The 1991 assembly election, when UP’s political space underwent a radical shift, is a fair cutoff to identify seats which still rely on Congress. In the seven elections since then, 11 seats have chosen the party three or more times.
Three seats — Rampur Khas, Banda and Padrauna — have actually voted for Congress more times after 1991 than before and one, Bilaspur, an equal number of times as earlier.
But winning a seat is not the only metric of popular support. Vote share might be a better indicator of that. Congress got more than 30% of the votes in 28 seats in 2017. If the cutoff is pushed to 40%, the number of seats goes down to five — Rae Bareli, Rampur Khas, Kanpur Cantonment, Varanasi South and Bareilly Cantonment. Congress didn’t win the last two. But its support bases were the strongest in the Awadh, Rohilkhand, Doab and western UP regions.
Barring Amethi and Bilaspur, all the constituencies that Congress has managed to win three times or more have been candidate strongholds — with either a Congress representative or their family winning each time.
The three times since 1991 that Mathura (Pradeep Mathur), Tilhar (Virendra Pratap Singh), Bansdih (Bacha Pathak) and Banda (Vivek Kumar Singh) went to Congress were centred on the candidates. Jagdishpur was entirely the bastion of old-school politician Ram Sevak — who had won nine times — and after he gave up politics, his grandson Radhey Shyam secured the seat as a Congress candidate in 2012. Just as Rampur Khas has been the stronghold of Pramod Tiwari — he also won the seat nine times — whose daughter Aradhana Mishra took over in 2017. The seat has been in the family, and with Congress, since 1980.
With voter support rallying behind smaller fiefdoms, it has been difficult for Congress to consolidate its split vote banks. And some of its last few strongholds are also teetering after acrimonious exits.
Rae Bareli was the domain of Akhilesh Kumar Singh, who won the seat five times (three times from Congress). After his death, his daughter Aditi Singh was elected as a Congress MLA in 2017. She later joined BJP. So did three-time Congress MLA from Padrauna, RPN Singh.
The Hardoi constituency, likewise, has been with one family since 1989. Naresh Chandra Agarwal won it for Congress in three elections (1991, 1993 and 1996) but switched to Samajwadi Party (SP) in 1997. His voter base followed. His son, Nitin Agarwal, represents the seat as an SP MLA now.
YEAR-WISE HISTORY
1918: Special Session in Bombay
The Indian National Congress. (From an Editorial)
The Indian National Congress meets to-day [August 29] in the Special Session in Bombay in circumstances of exceptional gravity. It has been convened by the Congress executive, the All-India Congress Committee, to consider the proposals of Indian constitutional reform made by Mr. Montagu, and Lord Chelmsford, and to express the collective opinion of educated India on the Report which has been published. It was the Congress that more than a year-and-a-half ago put forward, in conjunction with the premier national organisation of the Moslem community, a scheme of reforms which has captured the imagination of the people and forced the Government to bestow serious and earnest attention to the problem of political advance in this country. The joint scheme was justly claimed to be the minimum that was essential to render the government in India answerable to the people and place them on the road to self-government.
It is right and proper, therefore, that the Congress should examine how far the alternative plan suggested by the Secretary of State and the Viceroy corresponds to its own scheme and to what extent it would, if carried out, remedy the existing administrative evils and facilitate the march towards the goal. What the Cabinet now desires is consideration and criticism of the proposals and the obvious task of the Congress is to bring to bear on that great question the collective wisdom and mature judgment of the leaders of Indian thought and declare in unequivocal language what the country thinks of the scheme and how far it answers the expectations and satisfies the aspirations of the people.
1951-2019: seats won in Lok Sabha
May 24, 2019: The Times of India
From: May 24, 2019: The Times of India
Distracted, Congress fails to connect on core issues
NEW DELHI: The 2019 polls mark a serious setback for Congress with a second successive defeat bound to bring Rahul Gandhi’s leadership under scrutiny while raising questions about the party’s ability to negotiate the increasingly polarised nature of political contests.
The latest defeat to Narendra Modi will trigger bigger concerns in Congress than its decimation of 2014. On the backfoot against a rampaging BJP for the better part of its tenure, Congress had fortuitously managed a clean sweep over its rival’s strongholds in MP, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan.
As it then stepped up its campaign focusing on jobs and the economy, Congress announced a manifesto full of schemes led by the populist flagships of “right to minim-um income” and “loan waiver”. It also managed to seal caste-wise alliances in states as a firewall against BJP.
1951-2019: Big States and Congress’ Problem
From: May 24, 2019: The Times of India
See graphic:
The Congress’ electoral performance in TN, UP, Bihar, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh: 1951-2019
1969: Syndicate vs. ‘Indicate’
A
President Pranab Mukherjee reopened the pages of history by suggesting that Indira Gandhi saw through a plot hatched by Congress veterans, known as the “syndicate“, to dilute the Prime Minister's powers by installing a young Sanjiva Reddy in Rashtrapati Bhavan.
He also touched upon momentous events of Indira's life including Emergency , and referred to a survey to call her the best PM against whom the future premiers would be assessed. Touching upon the 1969 presidential election that came amid a confrontation between Indira Gandhi and senior Congress leaders who sponsored Reddy , Mukherjee said Indira sided with V V Giri, who had jumped into the fray , leading to Reddy's defeat. He wondered why a young and successful Reddy wanted to occupy an office without executive powers.
“Was Reddy's nomination an effort to curtail the powers of PM? Did Indira's rivals want to use the constitutional office of the Presi dent to provoke a confrontation between the President and the PM? Perhaps, Indira opposed Reddy's candidature because she saw through this game.She saw that an attempt was being ma de to dilute the authority of the PM and to enhance the role of the President,“ he said, delivering the Indira centennial lecture organized by Congress at Vigyan Bhavan.
Mukherjee linked the 42nd amendment to the Constitution, binding the President to the advice of the Cabinet, to this experience.
B
Prabhash K Dutta, June 21, 2022: The Times of India
It is considered the most controversial of all 15 presidential elections that India has held till date. It took place in 1969. The year is remembered for a lot of things: Bollywood star Madhubala died; space agency Isro was set up; the Central Industrial Security Force came into existence; banks were nationalised; Rajdhani trains were introduced; and India saw three persons officiating as the President.
The election of the President that year also resulted in the expulsion of the one of the most powerful prime ministers of India, Indira Gandhi, from her Congress party. This was the time when Indira was attempting to break free from the political shackles of the domineering group, often called the Syndicate, in the Congress.
A lingering problem
The tussle between the Syndicate — led by K Kamaraj — and Indira was largely the result of an unsettled leadership succession debate in the Congress after the death of her father and India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in 1964. While some of the staunch loyalists of the Nehru family wanted Indira to succeed, the Syndicate elevated Lal Bahadur Shastri to the post of PM.
But Shastri’s elevation also gave birth to another problem: who controls the levers of power — the ruling party or the government headed by the PM?
Led by K Kamaraj, the Syndicate had a stranglehold on Congress party affairs
With Nehru in charge, the Congress president always remained in his shadow. As the prime minister, Shastri drew his political authority within the Congress from the Syndicate, and before this binary could be settled, he, too, died of a heart attack in Tashkent. The Syndicate — comprising leaders mostly from non-Hindi states — had to decide on another candidate for the top post. Morarji Desai, Nehru’s finance minister, staked claim to the PM’s chair. But the Syndicate did not like him. A proposal came that Kamaraj should become the prime minister but he refused saying, “No Hindi, no English, how?”
From friends to foe
To counter Desai, then Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Dwarka Prasad Mishra suggested to Kamaraj that the Syndicate should prop up Indira. Memories of Nehru were still fresh in people’s minds as well as in the Congress. Shastri had inducted her in his cabinet. Desai challenged the decision but lost in an internal election.
Now, the Syndicate had played kingmaker for two PMs and considered its right to dominate the government. Indira was feeling chained in the Prime Minister’s Office even after she took the Congress to victory in the 1967 parliamentary election — which also saw the Congress weaken in many states with a coalition force, called the Samyukta Vidhayak Dal (SVD) making impressive gains in several Hindi-speaking states.
Battle of ballots
Then in May 1969, President Zakir Hussain passed away. Vice-President VV Giri became the acting President. The Syndicate wanted Neelam Sanjiva Reddy as the next incumbent in the Rashtrapati Bhavan. After his name was announced, Indira pushed for making Giri the next President. Both sides stood their grounds, and a split in the Congress looked imminent. Giri resigned as the Vice-President and hence the acting President to contest the election.
The anti-defection law was yet to be conceived. Indira sought support of the Congress MPs (Members of Parliament) and MLAs (Members of Legislative Assembly) to vote for Giri. She gave a call to vote according to their “conscience”. Giri won the contest against Reddy. This was an embarrassing defeat for the Syndicate, whose member, S Nijalingappa, was the Congress president.
Showing the out door
A meeting of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) was called. A proposal to expel Indira was mooted. By a majority of 11 to 10, the CWC decided to expel Indira. Ten of her supporters held a separate meeting at her home and also the Congress headquarters declaring that she remained the leader of the parliamentary party. They forced a split of the Congress, to be called the Congress (R) — R standing for Requisition. The Syndicate-led Congress was called the Congress (O) — O standing for Organisation/Old Congress. Of the 705 members of the All India Congress Committee (AICC), 446 walked over to Indira’s Congress, which later became Congress (I).
Of the seven charges listed in the CWC resolution to expel Indira, the first was about her decision to field a separate candidate in the presidential election – “opposing the party nominee for the presidency”. Reddy and Desai had their revenge a few years later, when in 1977, the Janata Party ousted Indira from power, handing her party a resounding defeat. Reddy was elected as the President after Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed. In 1978, Indira was jailed after the Lok Sabha expelled her from the House “for having repeatedly committed breach of privilege and contempt of the House”. She was the first MP to have been sentenced to jail by the Lok Sabha, and remains the only former PM to have been imprisoned for breach of privilege and contempt of the House.
After the 1977 Lok Sabha defeat
Mukherjee said following the 1977 Lok Sabha defeat, Indira refu sed the advice of ma ny party leaders that cooperation with Ja nata Party was must to earn a popular par don for Emergency .
He recalled, “The atmosphere following e the elections was ex tremely hostile for In dira. The Janata Party as well as a section of Congressmen conducted a relentless slander campaign against her. The media was also completely against her. Anti-Indira rallies were held across the country with demonstrators shouting `hang her'.“
The President said the then home minister declared that Indira Gandhi's `crimes' deserved a trial on the lines of Nuremberg. “Frivolous cases were instituted against her and in one instance, she was even made co-accused in a case of stealing eggs and chicken in Manipur,“ he said.
1984: Mrs Gandhi has premonition about her death
The Times of India, Oct 20 2015
`Scindia lobbied Amar Singh against backing Cong bid to form govt in 1999'
Indira Gandhi had a premonition about her death just days before she was assassinated and con fided to her close associate M L Fotedar that she saw the possibility of Priyanka Gandhi eme rging as her political legatee over time -a suggestion that did not seem to go down well with Sonia Gandhi.
Revealing the dramatic circumstances of Indira's last days, Fotedar said she had visited Kashmir in late October 1984, drawn by a fondness of the change of season scenery and a desire to visit a Hindu and a Muslim shrine that the late leader reposed particular faith in. She was assassinated in Delhi on October 31, 1984. The old time Gandhi loy alist's recollection are due to be made pub lic soon in the form of a book `Chinar Leaves' that will be released on October 30 in the capital. Fotedar seems to support former minister Natwar Singh's claim that family pressure rather than an “inner voice“ was the reason for Sonia declining the prime minister's post in 2004.
“She saw a sign at the Hindu shrine that made her feel that her life was coming to an end. On the way back to the rest house in a car, she said as much. Then, in a thoughtful mood, she said Priyanka might be cut out for politics...that she might be successful and be in power for a long time,“ Fotedar.
The “sign“ Indira saw and which she interpreted to mean impending death was a shriveled tree at the Hindu shrine. Fotedar said he too read a similar portent. “I think she realised that I had noticed it too and reached similar conclusions. She revealed her mind on the way to the rest house,“ Fotedar said.
Much later, Fotedar wrote a detailed letter to Sonia putting down Indira's thoughts on Priyanka after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 during campaigning for the Lok Sabha election. Apparently , the contents of the letter were not well received.“I did write to Sonia describing whatever transpired on hat visit to Kashmir,“ Fote dar said.
1996: Sitaram Kesri
His caste
Congress Party Picks Low-Caste Leader, September 24, 1996: Los Angeles Times
The Congress (I) Party, which ran India for much of its independence only to lose power in 1996, chose Sitaram Kesri, a low-caste confidant of the former prime minister, as its temporary president. Former Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao resigned the party leadership after a judge ordered that he be charged with corruption. Kesri is a respected leader of low-caste Hindus in northern India. He has been party treasurer for the last 20 years. His leadership could swing low-caste votes toward the party in upcoming state elections in Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state.
Party leader Tariq Anwar, who was Kesri’s political advisor, came forth to declare that the former party chief was not a Dalit. he belonged to ‘Vaishya’ community.
The Congress leader also claimed, “Kesari Ji himself offered to resign from the post of Congress president if Sonia ji was ready to take over. At that time I was Sitaram Kesari’s political advisor, so I’m aware of it,” he claimed.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared that the Congress did not let its former ‘Dalit’ leader complete his term as president.
“The country knows that Sitaram Kesri, a Dalit, was not allowed to complete his five-year term as Congress president. He was thrown out of office and to the footpath to make way for Sonia Gandhi as the new party chief,” Modi declared.
The Congress rubbished the prime minister’s claim of Kesri being a Dalit, claiming instead that the leader belonged to the Vaishya or Bania community.
Modi had used Kesri’s reference to claim how only four generations of the Nehru-Gandhi family “benefitted from being in power” even as he tried to impress upon the gathering that the family would not have any ‘outsider’ lead the party. He further challenged the Congress to have someone “capable” from outside the “family” to be its president.
“Remember the days when four generations of a family ruled the country. What was the fate of the people? They only thought about the welfare of one family but never thought about the welfare of the people. How can we expect them to fulfil the aspirations of the people now?” he asked.
Speaking on the last day of campaigning for the second round of assembly elections in Chhattisgarh, Modi also accused the Congress of placing many hurdles in the path of chief minister Raman Singh. “For 10 years, the Centre was ruled by a remote-control government, which never paid attention towards Chhattisgarh,” he said.
He also accused Congress president Rahul Gandhi of playing a game of promises over its proposed farm loan waiver scheme. Averring to the issue, which has caught the fancy of the electorate, Modi said: “As elections approach, the Congress plays a game of promises. But they cannot mislead the country anymore. They must answer what they did for the welfare of our farmers when they ruled for four generations.”
Within minutes of Modi’s claim on Kesri, the Congress called his bluff. Party leader Tariq Anwar, who was Kesri’s political advisor, came forth to declare that the former party chief was not a Dalit. “PM is again wrong as Kesari ji was not a Dalit, he belonged to ‘Vaishya’ community.”
The Congress leader also claimed that Modi was also wrong on the fact that Kesri had been removed. “Kesari Ji himself offered to resign from the post of Congress president if Sonia ji was ready to take over. At that time I was Sitaram Kesari’s political advisor, so I’m aware of it,” he claimed.
Congress spokesperson Manish Tiwari had a slightly different take on Kesri’s background. He tweeted that “Kesri was a Bania OBC from Bihar and not a Dalit. However, when has the PM allowed facts or truth to stand in the way?”
While Modi erred on Kesri’s caste, the fact remains that towards his last days in office, Congress did not show Kesri the respect he deserved as head of the party. He was not even invited for a major party rally at Nuh in the Mewat district of Haryana that was attended, among others, by the then senior leaders Manmohan Singh, Ghulam Nabi Azad and Natwar Singh. Kesri resigned as party president in March 1998 after Congress lost the Lok Sabha elections.
1998- 2017: The Sonia Gandhi years
Subodh Ghildiyal, December 17, 2017: The Times of India
See graphic:
1998- 2017- The Sonia Gandhi era of the Congress
From: Subodh Ghildiyal, December 17, 2017: The Times of India
The Sonia years: The rise to glory, and then the fall
Assessing her 19 years at the helm of Congress, which “was like a lifetime had flown by”, Sonia Gandhi said she took charge when the party was faced with a crisis, with governments in barely three states and power at the Centre nowhere in sight.
Contrasting Congress’s barren patch with the later spell under her leadership, Sonia said the party went on to form governments in over two dozen states and ruled the Centre for two consecutive terms. The Congress supremo’s emotional speech, as she vacated the chair for son Rahul Gandhi, best summed up what will be known in political history as “The Sonia years”.
A reluctant politician forced into office by Congress leaders who found the party adrift in the post-Rajiv Gandhi vacuum, Sonia united a splintering Congress and made it the byword for power for a decade. How it was achieved and sustained marked a paradigm shift in the frozen mindsets of an institutionalised Congress.
For Congressmen, Sonia would always be known for how she stitched a strategy to vanquish Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s BJP at the peak of its appeal in 2004.
Her enduring achievement was her imaginative strategy to propel Congress into the “coalition age”. With an entrenched belief that it was the “natural party of governance” and others were “vipaksh”, Congress managers refused to look at how a federalising polity had made “oneparty rule” redundant in the post-Mandal-Mandir phase.
Congress waited for coalitions to collapse, like V P Singh’s, or brought governments down, like that of Chandrashekhar, but did not think of sharing power.
On the other hand, rival BJP stole a march as its awareness of its geographical limitations forced it to cobble together an alliance that managed to capture power in Delhi. BJP’s success possibly delivered the message home, and Congress erected the rival “secular bloc” under Sonia in 2004. It struck gold and, defying doomsayers, UPA came to power and ruled for two terms under Manmohan Singh.
As Sonia left office, Congress leaders pointed to the “UPA coalition” as her biggest achievement. Targeted by the R-S-S family, Indira Gandhi’s daughter-in-law manoeuvred smartly to defuse the “foreign origin” bomb by naming an accomplished economist without a personal political constituency as the PM.
In an unheard of system, UPA ruled as a diarchy with Sonia heading an advisory body called National Advisory Council and Manmohan Singh helming the government. The system did well, coopted activism and branded Congress “pro-poor”. Sonia was the toast of the commentariat and Congressmen.
But Sonia’s success had an expiry date. The system of governance broke down in UPA-II because of clashes of ideas and compulsions of coalition, partially known as corruption. That the party which enacted the Right to Information and sacked leaders for graft became so hated that a newbie in AAP could supplant it in Delhi, reflected how deep the rot ran and how serious the crisis of perception was.
Sonia failed to detect the drift in government which chipped away at the otherwise unshakeable Congress, a fact that lies at the root of the party’s decimation in 2014 and is lamented as her big failure. Many wonder how her famed reflexes failed to notice the incoming disaster. She also fumbled in political succession. Whenthe successor was no secret and her own interest was waning, the change of baton could have been better timed, possibly when Congress was still strong.
Instead, Rahul’s entry into Congress and his “new ideas” created a parallel subset in the party, the cause of schisms along “generational” and “transparency” lines. The “insider-outsider” debate took a toll on Congress.
And what followed as a result was the big defeat in 2014 from which Congress has not recovered three years into the opposition. Like her entry, Sonia’s exit coincides with an existential crisis facing Congress. Can the son match the mother’s record, that was the question uppermost on all minds as the batonchanged hands.
1999: Scindia lobbied Amar against backing Cong’s govt. bid
The Times of India Fotedar said the late Madhavrao Scindia lobbied former Samajwadi Party eader Amar Singh against supporting the Congress's claim to forming a govern ment in 1999 after the Vaj payee government lost a con idence motion by one vote Scindia, according to Fote dar, was miffed at the possi bility of Sonia nominating Manmohan Singh as the prime minister and worked to prevent such an eventuality . While Fotedar's account has the Manmohan Singh angle, the accounts of the period have Sonia as having made the claim to have the support of 272 MPs to the then President K R Narayanan. Fotedar's revelations indicate a cooling of relations between him and Sonia as he wryly recalled the late Congress leader Sitaram Kesri warning him that he will get nothing from the current Congress president. “Yes, that happened. We used to talk very freely . It was my job to tell him that he had to make way for Sonia. He was upset and said I would get nothing for all my troubles,“ Fotedar said. Kesri's prophesy seems to have come true to a large extent as Fotedar was passed over for even a Rajya Sabha membership while other members of the Congress (T) -the splinter formed by Sonia loyalists to oppose P V Narasimha Rao -like Arjun Singh, N D Tiwari and Sheila Dikshit, did much better. Fotedar recalled that he felt Rajiv Gandhi's rift with his cousin Arun Nehru was handled badly and suggests that Sonia and Satish Sharma had a role in Nehru's ouster. “I did tell Rajiv that the episode could rebound on him as Arun Nehru would seek revenge. That is what happened when the Bofors story surfaced,“ he said.
The veteran also said that after the V P Singh government fell in 1990, the then President R Venkataraman was dead opposed to swearing in Rajiv Gandhi as prime minister, preferring Pranab Mukherjee instead. Rajiv was taken aback by Venkataraman's vehemence.
1999–2014: Performance in Lok Sabha elections
Kaushik Deka , Swinging electoral fortunes “ India Today” 18/12/2017
2003-14: Fluctuating fortunes
The Times of India, Jan 19 2015
The Grand old party struggles to find a revival strategy amid infighting, inertia & confusion
As Congress prepares to launch an ambitious membership drive to start a resolute fight against the Modi government’s policies, a status report of its major state units shows the Grand Old Party must first defeat its enemies within: Chronic factionalism, inertia and confusion over organizational matters. Eight months after its rout in the LS elections, factional bickering and inaction remain its biggest weaknesses in most major states. In fact, these caused the party further humiliating losses in subsequent assembly and local body polls in many of these states.
Rahul Gandhi’s plans to reorganize the party have run into stubborn resistance from senior leaders in states such as UP, Rajasthan and Punjab.
And there seems to be little effort to address the malaise of a communication gap — one of Congress’s weakest spots in the LS poll campaign. Embarrassingly for Rahul, Sonia Gandhi’s office overruled his restructuring plans for the UP unit and cleared a mammoth 402-member executive on Tuesday. This, despite his insistence on small and accountable state executives. He’d rejected the UP PCC’s proposal before the CWC meet, asking it to prune the members to 250.
Possibly to address factionalism, the leadership adopted a ‘keep-everybody-happy’ approach, ignoring the cap on state-executive size Rahul favoured. This went against Rahul’s plan to reform the Congress machinery. The new in-charge of UP Congress’s communication unit, VN Madan, justified the jumbo executive. “UP is a very large state. For the party’s revival, we needed an all-inclusive group spanning all castes and religions,” he told TOI.
Elsewhere, it’s not just Rahul’s organizational overhaul plan that’s run into resistance. His appointees face rough weather, rivals blocking efforts to revive the organization. This is most evident in Punjab, where his handpicked chief Partap Singh Bajwa is locked in intense battle with Amarinder Singh, the party’s deputy leader in the LS. So much so, they’ve announced separate rallies against the Badal government on January 22.
Singh wants charge of PCC.
He’s reportedly told Sonia that under Bajwa, Congress victory against the SAD-BJP combine in the 2017 assembly polls would be difficult to achieve.
Singh hosted a luncheon show of strength in Patiala, where he claimed support of 35 of Congress’s 44 MLAs. Bajwa hit back in an interview to Eco nomic Times, saying: “There’s no need for a separate rally.
That’ll confuse supporters and demoralize workers.” Like Bajwa, another Rahul appointee, Rajasthan party chief Sachin Pilot too is on a difficult pitch. The party here is divided between Pilot followers and those of former CM Ashok Gehlot. Congress’s LS poll disaster was mirrored in the recent municipal polls.
Gehlot locked himself in his hometown, Jodhpur. Sources said the leaders hardly worked together during the campaign.
It looks grim for the party in the ongoing panchayat polls.
Rejecting Pilot’s restructuring plan, Gehlot said: “Those who left out should be inducted because when the party is not in power, responsibility to keep everyone together increases.” Pilot retorted: “We’ve appointed a large enough PCC.” Congress units in most states seem to have learnt no lessons despite many attributing the party’s successive assembly poll routs to factionalism. Only last week, Maharashtra’s ex-CM Ashok Chavan complained that internal differences had proved fatal in the assembly polls. “Groupism needs to be curtailed,” he cautioned. The problem of faction fighting in Maharashtra now looms large over the Brihan mumbai Muncipal Corporation elections. Congress looks clueless on tackling the Shiv Sena challenge. The party’s central leadership is still to decide on a replacement for Manikrao Thakre who quit as state chief in October taking responsibility for the assembly polls rout. The anti-Prithviraj Chavan lobby, in the forefront before the state polls, remains just as active.
Elsewhere, party units look listless. Indecision and inertia are common in the MP, TN, Andhra and Telangana units.
Take MP. The PCC’s indecision gave BJP a cakewalk in the first and second phases of the civic elections. The ruling party won all nine corporations. Even for the January 31 phase, Congress has missed the deadline for filing nominations. PCC chief Arun Yadav remained virtually incommunicado during this period and repeated AICC attempts to contact him failed.
The TN, Telangana and AP units are in disarray. In AP and Telangana, Congress continues to lie low months after defeats in both states. In AP, last week leaders N Raghuveera Reddy and Chiranjeevi emerged in public when they toured the new capital region near Vijaywada, expressing solidarity with farmers facing displacement. Privately , AP Congress netas say the road to recovery is long and arduous, and repair work could stretch till 2019. The scene is no dif ferent in Telangana. There’s virtually no activity at party headquarters Gandhi Bhavan.
TN Congressmen seem to have learned no lessons even after former Union minister G K Vasan split the party in November. Karti Chidambaram, P Chidambaram's son, challenged new party chief EVKS Elangovan rubbishing his efforts to revive the party invok ing Congress icon K Kamraj, known for his corruption-free administration in the 1960s.
“How will a 21-year-old connect to Kamaraj rule,” asks Karti, stressing that develop ment and employment are bigger issues.
2012-17: Performance in state assembly elections
See graphic. 'Performance in state assembly elections, 2012-17'
2018
2018-2019: fluctuating fortunes
From: May 24, 2019: The Times of India
See graphic:
2018-2019: the fluctuating fortunes of the Congress
2019
The number of seats won by the Congress: 2014 vis-à-vis 2019
From: May 24, 2019: The Times of India
From: May 24, 2019: The Times of India
See graphics:
The Congress’ vote share: 2014 vis-à-vis 2019
The number of seats won by the Congress: 2014 vis-à-vis 2019
What went wrong for the Congress in 2014 and 2019
Consolation in the South
May 24, 2019: The Times of India
In Retreat, Cong Finds Refuge Deep South
Shaky Alliances Fail To Deliver In 4 States
The intricately woven and widely thrown net of Congress alliances came apart in every state barring Tamil Nadu, dashing the lead opposition’s hopes to recoup ground from the 2014 decimation at the hands of Narendra Modi.
Maharashtra, Karnataka, Bihar and Jharkhand failed to fire for Congress despite it aligning with the principal anti-BJP parties in these regions, in what was a direct face-off between the saffron alliance and the “secular” combination. The scale of the defeat becomes evident from the fact that in several states, BJP’s vote share rose beyond 2014 and even exceeded 50%. What stood out is the opposition’s utter capitulation in the face of a nationalism-powered saffron charge.
Kerala, where Congress has a traditionally settled coalition with several minority outfits within the UDF, and Punjab are the only other bright spots where the party managed a high tally.
While RJD-Congress-HAMVIP — billed as the rainbow alliance of “backward classes” comprising extreme Dalits, most backwards as well as Yadavs — could barely open their account in 40-seat Bihar, JMMCongress came up far short of its hopes of sweeping the tribal pocket of Jharkhand. In Maharashtra, which accounts for 48 seats, NCP and Congress appeared never in contention against the Shiv Sena-BJP compact. This was the biggest shock, given the ground had appeared rife for major gains by the opposition, with rural distress, Maratha anger and drought as potential catalysts.
Even in Karnataka, where Congress sealed a pact with JD(S) last May and is in power in the state, the allies have conceded more ground than they did during the 2014 Modi wave.
A close look at the results suggest that post-Balakot, Modi towered over the electoral landscape, snuffing out Congress hopes of making the parliamentary polls an aggregate of state-level fights. Caste compulsions and regional considerations seem to have given way to a national referendum.
However, it is intriguing that the alliances simply failed to take off. A big reason could be that seat-sharing in Bihar, Karnataka, Jharkhand and even Maharashtra dragged on into the run-up to the campaign, while BJP was an early starter with rallies addressed by Modi. Wrangling over tickets by potential allies, it seems, created much bad blood among their workers, undercutting the cohesion expected between partners at the ground level.
In Karnataka, the distrust between JD(S) and Congress leaders was so pervasive that barbs did not stop even when the campaigning was in full flow. And they came from the top leaders. That BJP won in impregnable Congress forts in the state showed the strength of its popular appeal.
Tamil Nadu, however, shone through the wreckage of 2019’s alliances for Congress. Here, DMK led by Stalin virtually swept the 39-seat province plus Puducherry for the “secular” combine. The paradox being that Stalin, despite BJP being a non-entity in the Dravidian state, made the defeat of Modi the central theme of his campaign. BJP, of course, was a junior partner of the DMK rival AIADMK, which lost its charismatic mascot J Jayalalithaa last year.
State-wise performance, 2014> 2019
From: May 24, 2019: The Times of India
See graphic:
The Congress’ State-wise performance in the LS polls, 2014> 2019
Sonia Gandhi returns as Congress chief
August 11, 2019: The Times of India
For Cong, ‘first family’ remains sole glue
New Delhi: Sonia
Gandhi’s return as Congress chief suggests the party’s failure to settle on someone from outside the Gandhi family as Rahul’s successor, proving once again that for the party, the “first family” remains the sole glue.
Sources said Sonia was extremely reluctant to accept the proposal and had to be persuaded with calls of helping the party out of the present situation. She was also told that there was no unanimity on any other name for the post.
The run-up to the selection had seen many leaders and functionaries, the most prominent one being Punjab CM Amarinder Singh, pitching for the baton to be passed on to someone from the younger generation. However, the party managers, who are vested in the status quo, did not seem enthused by the idea of a generational change. The generational battle along “GenNext vs Old Guard” lines snuffed out whatever possibility there was of some from outside the family getting the reins.
Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala justified the decision by citing the “difficult times country was passing through” and by underlining Sonia’s credentials as “the experienced and tested leader”.
As per CWC’s decision, Sonia would hold the post till the AICC elections are held to select a full-time president. But it may have to wait for the coming string of assembly elections to get over, Delhi being the last in February 2020. It could put Sonia in the top job for around a year, well beyond the tenure that “interim” indicates. A resolution adopted by the CWC was effusive in its praise for Rahul, and emphasised that he had politely declined to continue as Congress president despite the unanimity among the “ billions of workers” that he continued.
In the extraordinary exercise carried out by the CWC on Saturday to seek the views of state leaders including state presidents, legislature party leaders and MPs, virtually every regional leader pitched for Rahul to continue. There was extreme reluctance to name an alternative. The only other name which came up for discussion was that of another Gandhi, party general secretary Priyanka.
The CWC, with 54 members present, in the morning divided itself into five subgroups to elicit views of states on who should succeed Rahul. Sonia and Rahul, who too were put in groups, recused themselves, saying they did not want their presence to influence the views of Congress members. The participants assembled at 8 pm again to discuss reports of the 5 sub-groups. The feedback ruled out a non-Gandhi, with members of at least one sub-group warning of “disintegration” if the leadership passed on to “the names that are doing the rounds”.
Punjab Congress chief Sunil Jakhar is said to have told the CWC sub-group that only Sonia could replace Rahul and threatened to sit at home if “any Tom, Dick and Harry” were appointed. Rajya Sabha MP Partap Singh Bajwa warned “some have left and others too would leave the party” if the organisation continued to be rudderless.
Amid continuing drama, Rahul rebuffed entreaties of CWC leaders to stay on, first made in the morning meeting and then at its late-night session. Late evening, the apex body chaired by former prime minister Manmohan Singh suggested Sonia as Rahul’s interim successor.
Earlier in the day, the much-awaited CWC meeting started with senior leaders urging Rahul to continue to lead the Congress, citing “trying times” and “BJP’s onslaught on democracy” while also praising his “courage”.
Nov: 10 UP Congmen expelled for defying Priyanka
Shailvee Sharda, Nov 25, 2019: The Times of India
Congress sacked 10 of the 11rebels in UP pradesh committee who had defied general secretary Priyanka Gandhi’s attempts to revamp the party in the state by opposing the appointment of Ajay Kumar Lallu as the UP unit chief. The 10 members, including Santosh Singh who was one of the representatives in AICC from UP, were expelled from Congress for six years.
The sacked UP PCC members had opposed Priyanka saying their “decades of hard work and seniority were overlooked” by the party leadership while appointing Lallu, whom they considered “too junior and inexperienced”. The rebels held open sessions and handed out press statements against Lallu’s appointment, which were seen as an act of defiance.
Lateral entry approved by Gandhi siblings
Subodh Ghildiyal, July 20, 2021: The Times of India
The appointment of cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Sidhu as head of Punjab Congress marks a deliberate and considered tryst with “lateral entries” under the Gandhi siblings, a major change in a party where “loyalty” has been the touchstone of important organisational assignments.
Sidhu’s elevation, over the vocal objections of senior party leaders and chief minister Amarinder Singh, is part of a pattern where Congress is appointing new entrants as regional chiefs that till recently was an in-house taboo. Barely two weeks ago, Congress appointed Revanth Reddy as president of Telangana Congress, overruling protests. Reddy joined Congress from Telugu Desam Party in October 2017.
At the same time, it is learnt that Hardik Patel is a strong contender for the post of Gujarat president. The young leader, who shot into national fame as part of the Patidar agitation, is also viewed as holding the threat to join AAP if he is not promoted. Earlier, Congress appointed Nana Patole as the head of Maharashtra Congress. Elected a Lok Sabha MP on BJP ticket in 2014, he rebelled against PM Modi and joined AICC in 2018.
The icing on the “lateral entry“ cake is the party’s ongoing negotiations with high-profile election strategist Prashant Kishor for induction.
2020
Feb: Decimated in Delhi, other former strongholds
February 12, 2020: The Times of India
Losing its third consecutive election in Delhi was not the biggest shock for Congress. Slipping to 4% vote share was the real eye-opener.
Reduced to oblivion in a state where it was in office for 15 years, Congress’s future appears headed for dark times as the party has a terrible record of revival on turfs it has been knocked out multiple times. Congress is practically non-existent in Tamil Nadu, Bihar, West Bengal and Odisha. Once strongholds, these states saw the rise of regional parties and they successfully pushed Congress to virtual extinction. While it managed to retain a solid vote share despite losing repeatedly to BJD in Odisha, it has now been replaced by BJP as the second pole in the state. The Lok Sabha elections were a shocker as BJP managed to win half the seats in Naveen Patnaik’s fief.
The grand old party clawed back in late-2018 when it emerged victorious in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, besides Rajasthan. Once its forts, the twin states were won by BJP in 2003 and the saffron party went on to retain them for three consecutive terms.
Last month, Congress’s performance in Jharkhand of winning 16 seats and forming the government with senior ally JMM somewhat retrieved its long lost political space in the tribal state. But Delhi is sure to add a new headache for the leadership. Disappearing from Delhi politics is a big blow for a national party, more so for an opposition that has been pushed to the edges of national politics since the massive sweep of BJP in 2019.
A senior Congress functionary said, “If a national party does not survive in Delhi, it shrinks in national politics. Our leadership knows this fact about Delhi and Congress cannot take this result lightly.”
He dismissed speculation that Congress wilfully and tactically did a no-show in the Delhi contest to ensure that prime rival BJP was defeated — a theory doing the rounds and stoked further by Congress MP Partap Singh Bajwa.
2021
Congress issues austerity notice
Subodh Ghildiyal August 6, 2021: The Times of India
As part of steps to boost its kitty amid reports of a cash crunch, Congress has asked its parliamentarians to ensure payment of their contributions to the party fund and has also issued strict austerity directives for its office-bearers.
Well-placed sources said AICC this week sent a reminder to its MPs in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha that they should make their annual payments regularly. What seems to have created a problem is that Congress has a large number of new members of Parliament who are not aware of their contribution obligations. This has led to a big outstanding. Adding to the problem is the fact that the number of Congress MPs in both Houses has badly dwindled since the ouster of the UPA government from power in 2014.
According to the norms set on the basis of the Manmohan Singh committee on party funding, every MP has to make an annual payment of Rs 50,000 besides getting two sympathisers to contribute Rs 2,000 each.
The AICC has also sent out a set of austerity measures to party office-bearers on travel and lodging, while also asking its own staff to cut down on spending. In a bid to curtail travel expenditure, AICC secretaries, who are adjuncts to the general secretaries, have been asked to spend at least 15-20 days per month in the states they have been assigned to. The states have been designated as their headquarters in place of the AICC.
Up to a distance of 1,400 km, AICC secretaries will have to travel by train. They can avail air travel for distances beyond 1,400km, and that too only for two times in a month.
2024
Nomination of Ashok Singh from MP for Rajya Sabha
Subodh Ghildiyal, February 16, 2024: The Times of India
New Delhi: Congress’ nomination of Ashok Singh from MP for Rajya Sabha marked a climbdown for Rahul Gandhi who was pushing for former MP and confidante Meenakshi Natarajan for the upper House. The advantage for Singh was that he became a sort of joint candidate of Digvijaya Singh and Kamal Nath, while the central leadership is learnt to have stuck to Natarajan for elevation.
Singh’s profile is intriguing as he has lost four consecutive LS elections from Gwalior, even though it is argued
in his defence that he came second by close margins in a tough constituency. But what became his calling card was that he has been “pathologically” opposed to former party insider Jyotiraditya Scindia. This testimonial seems to have clinched his case, since the party is looking to rebuild in the Gwalior-Chambal region after Scindia’s exit and defeat of key leaders in the recent assembly polls. That he is an OBC only boosted his claim.
But sources said Singh’s camp credentials became mysteriously bipartisan this time around. While he has been known as aDigvijaya loyalist, and Nath was said to have lobbied for himself for RS, sources close to Nath said he had indeed put forward Singh’s name. The surmise is that once Nath was turned down by party brass, he suggested Singh for RS.
“Ashok Singh is a Digvijaya man, but Nath made him the treasurer of the state Congress,” a leader said.
In contrast, Rahul pre- ferred Natarajan in upper House. She had won Mandsaur LS seat in 2009, but has since lost the polls. An aide, she has overseen projects close to Rahul’s heart in Congress.
But Nath resisted the name till the last moment. When he refused to relent in his final conversations with the leadership, the party appears to have agreed on Singh.
With the leadership having had its way in the appointment of MP Congress president Jitu Patwari and legislature party leader Umang Singhar after the shock defeat in the assembly polls under Nath’s stewardship, the veteran had his way in this round.
Cong alleges bank a/cs frozen, govt says ₹115cr attached by I-T
February 17, 2024: The Times of India
New Delhi: Congress alleged that the income tax department had frozen all its bank accounts, crippling its activities ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, a charge that was rejected by official sources as “misleading and misrepresentation of facts”.
Official sources said I-T dept had attached Rs 115 crore in various accounts of Congress in pursuance of a tax demand pending since 2018-19 and following a process which applies to all taxpayers.
At a hurriedly convened press conference in the morning, Congress treasurer Ajay Maken said I-T dept had frozen the party’s main bank accounts on the “flimsy” ground of delay in filing returns years ago. He said the action had left the party with no money to me- et daily expenses and was part of Modi govt’s agenda to “kill democracy” and turn the country into a one-party state.
Later, party MP and lawyer Vivek Tankha said on X that the I-T appellate tribunal had allowed the party to ope- rate its accounts with the lien (legal claim) of the I-T dept. The tribunal will hear the matter on Feb 21 before a final decision is taken.
With party chief Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi also attacking the Modi govt, official sources debunked the charge as deliberate misrepresentation of I-T proceedings which apply to all taxpayers — individuals and entities.
The sources confirmed I-T dept attached Rs 115 crore, following an interim order of the tax tribunal, and that the action is linked to proceedings dating back to 2018-2019, arising from Congress’ failure to file returns on time.
