Rasheed kidwai
Journalist and senior author
The infighting in Congress is becoming procedural and legal. The Central Electoral Authority (CEA) of the great old party has prepared a list of delegates from the AICC and has asked the acting head of the party, Sonia Gandhi, for time. Sonia is expected to convene the Congressional Working Committee (CWC) to approve and announce a party voting schedule.
According to Madhusudan Devram Mistry, who heads the CEA, the new president will be elected by a thousand AICC delegates and not by the traditional electoral college consisting of delegates from the Pradesh Congressional Committee (around 13,000) spread across the country. Article XVIII (h) of the Congress constitution provides for the election of a “regular president” by the AICC if the president resigns.
Rahul Gandhi was elected the 87th president of the AICC in December 2017 for five years. However, he resigned in May 2019, being responsible for the debacle of the Lok Sabha elections. The term of the ‘regular president’ will be until December 2022 when new polls must be called in which the PCC delegates can vote.
But there is a difference in perception between the G23, a group of 23 dissidents who had written a letter to Sonia Gandhi in August this year, questioning the way Congress was working, and the CEA on how to conduct the organizational elections. of the party.
While dissenters in Congress 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, also take the CWC polls. Pro-establishment elements within Congress see no reason for the CWC polls, as Sonia Gandhi, on September 11, 2020, had reconstituted the CWC.
For dissidents, that was illegal. Article XIII (d) of the Congress constitution states that the AICC must meet at least once a year, but it has not been convened since March 18, 2018, when the 84th plenary session of Congress was held in New Delhi. Dissidents also question Sonia’s continuation as Acting Chief beyond August 2020, as she was appointed Acting Chief for one year on August 10, 2019. The Acting Chief, since then, has not attempted to convene an AICC session , as required by party rule. book, they argue.
Dissidents also question the decision of congressional leaders not to have appointed Ghulam Nabi Azad, who was the highest-ranking secretary general when Rahul tendered his resignation on May 25, 2019. Article XVIII (h) reads: “In In the event of an emergency due to any cause such as the death or resignation of the President elected as indicated above, the highest ranking Secretary General will perform the routine functions of the President until the Working Committee appoints a provisional President pending the election of a President holder by the AICC ”.
Members of the Congress party dismiss the charge, claiming it is a “gray area.” According to them, although Rahul had ‘offered’ to resign on May 25, 2019, his resignation was accepted sometime in July of that year. A month later, the party’s top leaders, numbering around 150, had gathered at 24 Akbar Road, New Delhi, where an informal recount took place and an overwhelming majority favored Sonia Gandhi as interim president. of the party. Sonia, congressional leaders claim, was willing to hold the AICC session and resign from her job within a year, but Covid-19 acted as a spoiler.
Both dissidents and the Congressional establishment are fine-tuning their strategies. Dissidents want the CEA to carry out the CWC polls and hope to win at least half of the positions 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 foci of support in Congress.
The official side of 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 being made to persuade Rahul Gandhi to take over as “regular chairman” of the party. However, if Rahul doesn’t want to be boss, they want him to informally nominate a ‘non-Gandhi’ member to serve as president of Congress until December 2022.
Privately, many dissenters scoff at such a suggestion, insisting that in such an eventuality (of a non-Gandhi member taking over as regular president), they would force a contest. Your game plan is to show your strength and turn it into a close battle.
Sonia Gandhi, party sources say, wishes to avoid any internal strife on the grounds that such a course would weaken the party’s unity and discipline.
Some former and current chief ministers of states ruled by Congress are trying to act as mediators between dissidents and the official establishment of Congress, a role that the late Ahmed Patel was playing. These elements are reported to have told Sonia Gandhi that the main demand of the dissidents is to obtain a firm commitment from Rahul Gandhi that he would openly declare himself a contender for the party’s highest position rather than prop up a ‘proxy’, or allow a ‘Free and fair party survey. Interestingly, almost half of the dissidents have no objection to Rahul Gandhi. They want him to become a 24×7 politician and to end his “tendency” to run the party organization by “power.”
In the good old days, too, Congress had a checkered history of murky party polls, dissent, and defiance, such as Mahatma Gandhi’s rejection of the victory of Subhas Chandra Bose and Jawaharlal Nehru liberating PD Tandon. But can a shaky Congress, facing a kind of existential crisis, afford an internal confrontation? The late Sitaram Kesri used to say, “Bina vidhvans ke nirman kaise hoga?” (Can there be construction without destruction?).
