Tussle over Cong chief turning procedural

The internal tussle in the Congress is turning procedural and legal. The grand old party’s Central Election Authority (CEA) has prepared a list of AICC delegates and sought time from party’s interim chief Sonia Gandhi. Sonia is expected to summon the Congress Working Committee (CWC) to approve and announce a party poll schedule.

According to Madhusudan Devram Mistry, who heads the CEA, the new president will be elected by 1,000-odd AICC delegates and not by the traditional electoral college consisting of Pradesh Congress Committee delegates (numbering around 13,000) spread all over the country. Article XVIII (h) of the Congress constitution stipulates election of a ‘regular president’ by the AICC if the president resigns.

Rahul Gandhi was elected 87th president of the AICC in December 2017 for five years. He, however, resigned in May 2019, owning responsibility for the Lok Sabha poll debacle. The term of the ‘regular president’ will be till December 2022 when fresh polls have to be called in which PCC delegates will get to vote.

But there is a difference of perception between G23, a group of 23 dissenters who had written a letter to Sonia Gandhi in August this year, questioning the way the Congress was functioning, and the CEA on how to go about conducting the party’s organisational elections.

While the Congress dissenters agree with Mistry that AICC delegates have powers to elect a ‘regular president’, they want Mistry and other CEA members, namely Rajesh Mishra, Krishna Byre Gowda, S Jothimani and Arvinder Singh Lovely, to conduct the CWC polls too. The pro-establishment elements within the Congress do not see a reason for the CWC polls as Sonia Gandhi, on September 11, 2020, had reconstituted the CWC.

For the dissenters, that was illegal. Article XIII (d) of the Congress constitution states that the AICC should meet at least once a year, but it has not been convened since March 18, 2018, when the 84th plenary session of the Congress was held in New Delhi. The dissidents also question Sonia’s continuation as interim chief beyond August 2020 as she was appointed interim chief for one year on August 10, 2019. The interim chief, since then, has made no attempt to convene an AICC session, as required by the party rule book, they argue.

The dissenters also question the Congress leadership’s move to not have appointed Ghulam Nabi Azad who was seniormost general secretary when Rahul had tendered resignation on May 25, 2019. Article XVIII (h) reads, “In the event of any emergency by reason of any cause such as the death or resignation of the President elected as above, the seniormost General Secretary will discharge the routine functions of the President until the Working Committee appoints a provisional President pending the election of a regular President by the AICC.”

Congress party insiders dismiss the charge on grounds of it being a ‘grey area’. According to them, though Rahul had ‘offered’ to resign on May 25, 2019, his resignation was accepted sometime in July that year. A month later, senior party leaders, numbering around 150, had gathered at 24, Akbar Road, New Delhi, where an informal headcount was conducted and an overwhelming majority favoured Sonia Gandhi as interim party president. Sonia, Congress leaders claim, was keen to hold the AICC session and relinquish her job within a year, but Covid-19 acted as a spoiler.

Both the dissenters and the Congress establishment are fine-tuning their strategies. The dissenters want the CEA to conduct the CWC polls and hope to win at least half of the berths as leaders like Ghulam Nabi Azad, Shashi Tharoor, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Kapil Sibal, Prithviraj Chavan, Manish Tewari, Mukul Wasnik, Jitin Prasada, M Veerappa Moily, PJ Kurien and Milind Deora have pockets of support in the Congress.

The official side of the Congress does not see the need for the CWC polls as Sonia Gandhi has already constituted the CWC. According to this school of thought, efforts are on to persuade Rahul Gandhi to take over as ‘regular president’ of the party. However, if Rahul does not want to be chief, they want him to informally nominate a ‘non-Gandhi’ member to discharge the duties of the Congress president till December 2022.

Privately, many dissenters scoff at such a suggestion, insisting that in such an eventuality (of a non-Gandhi member taking over as a regular president), they would force a contest. Their game plan is to demonstrate their strength and make it a close battle.

Sonia Gandhi, party sources say, wishes to avoid any inhouse contest on the ground that such a course would weaken the party unity and discipline.

Some former and present chief ministers of the Congress-ruled states are trying to act as mediators between the dissenters and the official Congress establishment, a role that the late Ahmed Patel was playing. These elements are reported to have told Sonia Gandhi that the dissenters’ main demand is to get a firm commitment from Rahul Gandhi that he would openly declare himself as contender for the party’s top post instead of propping up a ‘proxy’, or allow a ‘free and fair’ party poll. Interestingly, almost half of the dissenters have no objection to Rahul Gandhi. They want him to become a 24×7 politician and end his ‘tendency’ to run the party organisation by ‘proxy’.

In the good old days, too, the Congress had a chequered history of murky party polls, dissent and defiance, such as Mahatma Gandhi’s rejection of Subhas Chandra Bose’s victory and Jawaharlal Nehru easing out PD Tandon. But can a tottering Congress, facing an existential crisis of sorts, afford an inhouse showdown? The late Sitaram Kesri used to say, “Bina vidhvans ke nirman kaise hoga?” (Can there be construction without destruction?).