India's opposition Congress in crisis amid questions over leadership

A supporter of India's main opposition Congress party at a rally outside the party headquarters in New Delhi on Aug 24, 2020. PHOTO: REUTERS

NEW DELHI - India's main opposition Congress was thrown into turmoil on Monday (Aug 24) as a leadership crisis spilled out into the open in the latest setback for the party, which is fighting an uphill battle for political survival and relevance.

A marathon meeting of the Congress Working Committee (CWC), the top decision-making body, was held after a letter from 23 party leaders sought internal changes including a "full-time and visible" leadership.

The Congress has seen a leadership vacuum since Mr Rahul Gandhi resigned as party president last year to take moral responsibility for the party's loss in the general election. His mother, Mrs Sonia Gandhi, who became interim president, is known to be in poor health and he has resisted calls over the past year to resume charge.

The meeting appeared to have put a lid on the crisis of leadership for now, with most Congress leaders rallying around the Gandhi family and expressing faith in their leadership. A CWC statement said "no one can be permitted to weaken the party".

The letter has been interpreted as a criticism of the Gandhi-Nehru family that has dominated the party since India's independence in 1947 and given the country three prime ministers , even as its writers maintained it was to help revive the party.

Those who penned the letter, including heavyweights like Mr Ghulam Nabi Azad, Mr Shashi Tharoor and Mr Kapil Sibal, found themselves under attack from colleagues at the meeting on Monday.

Mr Gandhi criticised the timing of the letter even as his mother, who had wanted to quit because of it, was persuaded in the meeting to continue for now.

He said it was unfortunate that the letter came at a time when his mother is ailing and the party has just recovered from a crisis in Rajasthan state.

He is understood to have said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would benefit from the current crisis.

Mrs Gandhi said in concluding remarks at the meeting that the party needed to be united and that she did not hold any "ill will against anyone".

The trouble is not new to the Congress, which has been struggling politically since 2014, when Mr Modi swept to power on a landslide win and then returned in 2019 with an even bigger mandate.

The Congress won just 44 of 542 seats in the Lower House of Parliament in 2019, in contrast to 303 seats won by the BJP.

Although Mr Gandhi resigned as Congress president after the loss, he has continued to be the face of the party and take decisions.

Still, this style of functioning is seen to have rubbed some senior party leaders the wrong way amid concerns that he resisted taking senior leaders into confidence.

Analysts said the current crisis would only strengthen the perception that the 135-year-old party remained incapable of playing the crucial role of a strong opposition.

"The Congress is already a ship which is sinking. Whatever is coming out from these meetings, it gives an indication to common people that the party, which should be working to win the confidence of the people, is not able to do so. It (the controversy) is only doing harm to the party," said Prof Sanjay Kumar, director of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies.

Political commentator and columnist Neerja Chowdhury called it a " missed opportunity" for the party.

"You see from the way the whole thing has been handled... everybody has come to the rescue of the Gandhis and criticised those who wrote the letter. The result is that the Gandhis became the focal point of the exercise and not the issues raised by the 23 people about what needs to change and the need for a full-time president to end the drift. All that has been put on the backburner."

The party has seen a number of crises in the past year.

In March, it suffered a political setback following the resignation of Mr Jyotiraditya Scindia, who toppled the Congress government in Madhya Pradesh and helped the BJP to come back to power.

Last month, it staved off a political crisis in Rajasthan after state leader Sachin Pilot and a handful of Members of the Legislative Assembly revolted. But he was persuaded to return to the party fold.

Still the criticism against the leaders who wrote the letter is also seen to have shown that a section of the party is not ready to give up on the dynasty.

"I don't think the non-family leadership is ready to bite the bullet partly because of the cabal around the (Gandhi) leadership. This cabal consists of leaders who haven't won direct elections for some time. They have no mass base of their own and if the first family doesn't have its place, this cabal would lose its importance," said Dr Sandeep Shastri, a Bengaluru-based political analyst.

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