From Our Bureau
NEW DELHI: The Congress Working Committee (CWC), the highest party’s decision-making body, is meeting Sunday evening at 4 PM for introspection of the disaster in the Assembly elections early this week, amid pressure mounting to oust Rahul Gandhi from it for the worst results under his command.
The meeting will be attended by extended CWC which has 68 members including the in–charges of the five States.
Congress chief spokesman Randeep Singh Surjewala denied any resignation by Rahul or his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, the AICC general secretary in-charge of Uttar Pradesh, asserting that such a news based on unnamed sources is completely unfair.
Fireworks are expected in the CWC as many senior leaders are upset over the way Rahul and Priyanka have been running the party, sidelining Sonia Gandhi and insisting to further delay the organisational elections till August-September instead of the immediate correctives to prevent the Congress sinking further.
Many members questioned utility of the CWC meeting, noting that the leadership has ignored the Ashok Chavan Committee report on the analysis of defeat in Kerala and West Bengal in May last year that was submitted to Congress President Sonia Gandhi in July last year.
After the party drew a blank in West Bengal and could not stop Pinarayi Vijayan of CPI-M from returning to power in Kerala, it had set up a five–member committee under former Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan. The committee included former I&B minister Manish Tewari, who is part of the G-23 rebel group,and Lok Sabha MP Jothimani who is considered a Rahul Gandhi loyalist.
The report gave an indepth analysis of possible and future alliances with other parties, but it was thrown into dustbin while considering the tie-ups with other parties in the recent elections. The report was never tabled or discussed in any subsequent meetings.
In the last CWC meeting on October 16 last year, former Rajya Sabha Opposition leader Ghulam Nabi Azad as leader of the G-23 rebel group asked about the report but his questions were met with “stoic silence”. “Even the summary of the report was not verbally shared with the CWC,” one of the members said.
The pro-Grandhis camp, however, claims that the report was never meant for the consumption of the CWC or any other leaders.
Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, a member of the G-23, had on Thursday, tweeted the party could not avoid change. Some of the rebel leaders met at Azad’s residence Friday evening to discuss the way forward while expressing dismay at the Congress leadershoip not taking any corrective steps to revive the party.
The Gandhi family loyalists refuse to put blame on Rahul for the debacle. D K Shivakumar, the party’s troubleshooter from Karnataka, on Friday affirmed that the Congress cannot be united without the first family and “impossible for it to survive without them.”
After a wipe-out in five assembly elections and losing Punjab, one of the last major states under its control, to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), and failing to put up a strong fight in three other states where it had hoped for a comeback – Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur, Gandhis are facing all round criticism.
The poll defeat has revived searing criticism of the top leadership and growing clamour for a complete overhaul and a leadership change by number of party leaders – a demand that was so far confined to the “G-23” or group of 23 rebels who had written to Sonia Gandhi two years ago.
“There will be no course correction,” said senior Congress leaders, who are speaking out within the party against the Gandhis’ leadership but do not want to come on record. Since the CWC will have a closed-door meeting in the AICC headquarters here, some are expected to speak out, questioning the way Rahul conducted the party for the last two years after quitting as the Congress president on the Lok Sabha poll defeat.
While a sizable cross section of Indian society and polity of the country has high expectations from the Congress to fight the Sangh-BJP led onslaught on the Idea of India bequeathed by the freedom struggle led by Mahatma Gandhi, it remains to be seen whether the party can revive and reinvent itself to meet the challenges to the country.
