New Delhi: In a rebuff to the Gandhi family, senior Congress leader and prominent advocate Kapil Sibal quit the Congress and filed his nomination for Rajya Sabha elections with the support of the Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party.
Following his nomination, Sibal said that he had tendered his resignation on May 16, a day after Rahul Gandhi in his speech at the three-day Chitan Shivir in Udaipur had declared that none of the regional parties but only the Indian National Congress can give an ideological opposition to the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Rahul Gandhi’s suggestion that regional forces can’t scale up their political opposition to an ideological level had left many state allies of the Congress miffed. Many of them took exception to the Gandhi scion’s statement, while political observers believed that such a remark may only dent the possibilities of a united opposition at a time when Congress is too beleaguered to mount a formidable challenge to the BJP alone. In fact, the remark seems out of place as many of the regional parties have performed better than the Congress in tackling the dominance of the BJP.
Also read: Regional Parties, Including Allies, Criticise Rahul Gandhi’s Remarks on Ideology
During the three-day Chintan Shivir, the Gandhi family made all efforts to placate the so-called G-23, the group of senior leaders who openly challenged the ineffective Gandhi family’s leadership. Many among them like Ghulam Nabi Azad, Bhupinder Hooda, Anand Sharma, Manish Tewari and others were accommodated in various committees constituted to bring in organisational reforms. But Sibal, the more vocal among the dissenters, was left out not only from the Chintan Shivir but also the new committees.
Congress interim President Sonia Gandhi with senior party leaders Mallikarjun Kharge, P Chidambaram, Bhupinder Hooda and others during submission of reports by convenors of the coordination panels in Udaipur. Photo: PTI.
On Tuesday, Sonia Gandhi formed the political affairs group that will function as an advisory body and the promised Task Force-2024 which will take strategic decisions to prepare the Congress for the next Lok Sabha polls.
While the political affairs group, in which Sharma and Azad were included, will have no real powers, the Task Force- 2024 has only members who are considered close to the Gandhis: former finance minister P. Chidambaram, Mukul Wasnik, Jairam Ramesh, K.C. Venugopal, Ajay Maken, Priyanka Gandhi, Randeep Singh Surjewala and election strategist Sunil Kanugolu, who was once Prashant Kishor’s aide. Although Wasnik was initially a part of G-23, he has since veered towards the Gandhis.
The Gandhis have essentially cemented their position in the party by making quick moves after the G-23 wrote their first letter of dissent. The interim president Sonia Gandhi organised Chintan Shivir, promised internal elections, attempted to strike a rapprochement with some senior dissenting leaders, and reconstituted state committees to bring in young workers who are loyal to Gandhis.
Sibal’s exit and confusion looming over Congress
For the G-23 groups, whose primary demand was to adopt a collective decision-making model at all levels of the party and revival of a parliamentary board on the lines of the BJP, the recent changes on the basis of the Udaipur Declaration may only seem tokenistic.
The Gandhi loyalists say that many of the rebels are eyeing Rajya Sabha nominations from Congress. The tenure of leaders like Sibal, Azad, and Sharma has ended and their positions will most likely be given to new faces. But the dissenters have time and again dismissed such a view and foregrounded the structural ailments of the party under the Gandhi family’s leadership. In the upcoming Upper House elections, Congress is in a position to win around 10 seats.
Also read: Congress’s Chintan Shivir Was a Step in the Right Direction
Sibal’s decision to contest the upcoming Rajya Sabha polls as an independent candidate but with Samajwadi Party’s support has come against such a backdrop. Earlier, Gujarat Congress’s working president Hardik Patel also exited the party, and so did Sunil Jakhar, former Punjab Congress Committee president and one of the state’s top leaders, to join the BJP.
The frequent exodus of important leaders is likely to affect the party’s standing against the BJP. Moreover, even as the grand-old party promised to implement the Udaipur Declaration on a “war-footing”, it had barely shown any signs to contain the brooding disgruntlement and internal rivalry in almost all state units.
Meanwhile, the party also plans to begin a district-level Jan Jagaran Yatra, and a “Bharat Jodo” Yatra from October 2. The responsibility to organise these have been given to a diverse group of leaders, many of whom are engaged in a persistent rivalry with different Congress leaders in their respective states. For example, the central planning group for coordination of the Bharat Jodo Yatra comprises Digvijaya Singh, Sachin Pilot, Shashi Tharoor, Ravneet Singh Bittu, Jothi Mani, Pradyut Bordoloi, K. J. George, Jitu Patwari and Saleem Ahmed.
Thus, it is hardly a surprise that immediately after filing his nomination, Sibal emphasised the need for a uniting opposition against the BJP and to have an independent voice in the Upper House.
“My future plans are to unite the opposition to oppose the present BJP dispensation which is following anti-people policies and which is dividing the inclusive culture of India,” he told the Indian Express.
In the same vein, he said, “…I had made a public statement that I will never join any other political party. So consistent with my public position, I have done what I proclaimed. Of course, as an independent member (of the Rajya Sabha), I hope to be an independent voice in the country.”
Both the remarks may as well be read as a taunt on Rahul Gandhi. So much has been the pressure on him after his remark on regional parties that he had to clarify that “Congress doesn’t want to be Big Daddy”.
Some top-level leaders in the party say that Rahul Gandhi doesn’t want to contest the internal presidential elections, although his win is almost pre-determined given the support he enjoys among state units.
The Gandhi family has only been giving confusing messages about its future role in the party. All the recent workings of the party have gone on to firm the family’s position in the leadership. Yet, if none in the Gandhi family actually wants to helm the party’s affairs, it has still not cleared the way for others to come up. In such a scenario, the exit of Sibal, who has also been a legal asset to the party, creates bad optics and may only harm the party’s prospects in more ways than one.
