The Congress Party And Rajasthan – Prisoners Of Their Own Delusions

The Congress party is in a pretty pickle. It needs to hold elections for the post of party president soon, since its leader, Rahul Gandhi, has made it clear that he does not wish to take up that post. But, as tragicomic events of the past week show, those elections can’t be held without running the risk of splintering the party, and losing Rajasthan.

This is because Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot’s abortive candidacy for party presidentship has opened a can of worms in the state. An overwhelming majority of Congress legislators made it clear that Congress leader Sachin Pilot was not welcome as a replacement to Gehlot, in the event that the latter was elected president. If it was not to be Gehlot as CM, they said in a rare, collective harrumph, it would have to be one from the Gehlot camp.

The irony is that Gehlot made public his decision to contest the presidential elections only after he had met party president Sonia Gandhi in New Delhi, and Rahul Gandhi in Kerala.

It is impossible to believe that this rebellion by the Gehlot camp could have broken out after such extensive consultations had been held at the highest levels within the party – unless…there existed a monumental disconnect between the Congress leadership at the centre, and that in the state.

And, for once, the Congress couldn’t even blame the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of engineering a diabolical regime change ploy, another ‘Operation Lotus’, because this mess was entirely of their own, in-house creation. It wasn’t the BJP which put Gehlot’s name up for the top job, and it certainly wasn’t the BJP which sought to have Sachin Pilot succeed Gehlot as Chief Minister.

This thesis of a gaping disconnect between the Congress centre and the grassroots gained considerable traction when two senior party leaders, Mallikarjun Kharge and Ajay Maken, were frantically dispatched to Jaipur, to talk to the Congress MLAs, the Gehlot camp, and to institute damage control.

The party couldn’t have done worse even if it tried, for, in a scene right out of a Laurel and Hardy script, Maken was left smiling bravely to the cameras, while he sheepishly announced that, well, 90 of their 100-odd MLAs actually failed to attend the meeting.

The Gehlot camp’s spokesman was vociferously blunt in his faction’s defence: he said that they were given instructions to assemble at one spot, at a particular time, but that both time and venue were changed without their being intimated. So, these MLAs dutifully went to the first spot, found no one there, and then left for their constituencies since that was the first day of Navratras. And he said all that with a straight face!

What is one to make of such a national political party?

One, they can’t support a sitting Chief Minister for the post of party president because they are so woefully faction-riven in the state, that even a flutter would bring the edifice crashing down.

Two, the Gehlot faction’s rejection of Pilot as a replacement cannot be a surprise to the Congress’ central leadership, since Pilot’s ambitions are well known. After all, Pilot very nearly brought the Gehlot ministry down in mid-2020, when he made an abortive, poorly-strategized move for the Chief Ministership.

Three, if this is the high level of factionalism within the Congress in Rajasthan today, imagine how much worse it is going to get as the assembly elections of end-2023 draw closer? What would the party’s electoral prospects in the state be, considering that they bested the BJP in 2018 only by the proverbial whisker, and only because the BJP was temporarily hit by internal dissent?

Four, the Gehlot camp’s prompt rejection of Pilot’s proposed ascendancy shows just how weak a hold the Congress central leadership has over the state unit.

There are multiple reasons for such senseless bungling.

First, it beggars incredulity that the Congress defused Pilot’s 2020 coup attempt and kept him on in the party, knowing full well that they had clipped everything but his high ambitions. All they did was to kick the can down the road.

Second, the Congress actually thinks that it won in 2018 because of Pilot’s steering of their campaign as state party head. It didn’t.

Third, and most importantly, the Congress central leadership (and only them) believes that Pilot commands the Gujjar vote bank in Rajasthan and parts of Madhya Pradesh. He doesn’t; the story that Pilot controls a large base of dedicated voters is a myth.

The proof is self-evident: both in 2020, and now, Pilot was unable to get the backing of more than a handful of legislators, and once his bolt was shot, slunk quietly back to the doldrums. Worse, the Gujjar community stayed remarkably quiet about Pilot’s 2020 attempt, and made no noises in support or sympathy. It’s not making any noises at present either, and that is telling.

Nonetheless, the prevailing mistaken belief in senior Congress circles outside Rajasthan, and especially at their national headquarters, continues to be that if Pilot is not accommodated at a senior level within the Congress, they would lose this vital Gujjar vote bank, and the state.

Of course, it may well be that Pilot persists in his efforts to become something more than he presently is, but the quip doing the rounds in Rajasthan today is this: ‘if Gehlot stays on as CM, the Congress will lose 40 seats to the BJP, but if Pilot becomes CM, the Congress will lose 60 seats to the BJP!’

In conclusion, there is a depressing inevitability to how the Congress party’s latest internal crisis in Rajasthan will play itself out in the long run. One more state will slip out of its hands, while it remains imprisoned by its own delusions.

As a wag said, Shashi Tharoor is a safer bet as Congress president, because he, at least, has no state to lose.