Pointers Awaited From Raipur

As the Indian National Congress prepares to hold its 3-day Plenary session at Raipur from February 24 to 26, several issues stare in the face of the grand old party. Coming as it does after the 150-day Bharat Jodo Yatra by Rahul Gandhi, the crucial leadership question begs the answer most prominently. Though the 3,500-km Yatra has anointed the scion of the nation’s most known political family on a high pedestal, it is a moot question if the rank and file will be willing to cement his position with definite credentials.

The Party is expected to take up the question of alliances with parties opposed to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The recent proclamations by senior leader Salman Khurshid and opposition unity spearhead Mr Nitish Kumar have flung the gates wide open to join the platform for all those opposed to the saffron party. Unarguably, Congress would be the natural axis along which the divergent groups would need to cling.

Yet, how the party would negotiate the grand alliance and manoeuvre the unwilling Trinamool Congress (TMC), Bharata Rashtra Samiti (BRS), Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and other disparate parties would be watched avidly. It would require much thinking on laying a firm bulwark of programmatic action. Given the immediacy of Assembly elections in eight states (with Tripura having already voted), the party can neither delay nor dither on the issue. The nation is currently an ideologically colourful tapestry of political parties with a majority of them having splintered off the Indian National Congress during the last three or four decades.

The party is without its topmost decision-making body, the Congress Working Committee (CWC) for a considerable period of time. Anger over its absence and unwillingness of the Gandhi family to constitute it at an early date was the major bone of contention for those who either drifted away from the party or gathered under the G-23 umbrella. By keeping away a leader like Shashi Tharoor from the party’s steering committee, the newly elected President of the Party Mr Mallikarjuna Kharge has not sent any positive signal.

Tharoor’s contest against him for the election of the top functionary should have been seen as a healthy sign of democracy rather than a challenge to the leadership. The party can barely afford to ignore the schisms within and inner power tussle raging in Rajasthan, a state where it rules and Karnataka, where it faces the colossal electoral challenge from the BJP within the next two months. Even in Kerala, which currently contributes the largest chunk of Lok Sabha members, the party is far from being a united house.

Senior leader AK Antony’s son quit the party recently after a feud over the BBC documentary. But more than all of this, the huge shift being witnessed in the popular narrative following the ban on the BBC’s documentary, Hindenburg’s expose of the Prime Minister’s closest buddy from among the businessmen and business scene reeking with cronyism have begun to urge the party to shed the sloth and somnolence. The outcome from Raipur will be keenly awaited by all those who have seen the inexorable downslide of the Party’s fortunes in recent years.