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THE
NATION: CONGRESS
State
of Unrest
In the
run-up to party polls, Khurshid's sacking reveals Sonia's effort to promote
the Tiwari group as well as her unease at Jitendra Prasada's rising influence
By Laksmi
Iyer
In
her quest for a party that is unquestioningly loyal to her, Congress President
Sonia Gandhi is blundering her way through her re-election to the party
post. Forty-five days before the organisational elections-which she promised
would be free and fair-Sonia unceremoniously sacked Uttar Pradesh Congress
Committee (UPCC) president Salman Khurshid.
 |
| Recent
decisions on the party front indicate Sonia's effort to promote the
Tiwari group among other things |
The
ousted leader, however, received support from an unexpected quarter; friend-turned-foe
Jitendra Prasada turned friend again as he questioned the wisdom of changing
the PCC chief just six weeks before the elections. As the Congress Working
Committee (CWC) member's remark cast a shadow on the integrity of the
poll process, Sonia's aides circulated copies of her month-old letter
to the PCCs that had exhorted them to facilitate a fair poll as evidence
of her intent.
Khurshid's
sacking primarily gave away Sonia's anxiety over the challenge posed to
her by Prasada in Uttar Pradesh. For some time now the Prasada group has
been waging a proxy war against Sonia by training its gun on Khurshid;
even demanding his ouster. By axing him, Sonia succeeded in catching the
dissidents off guard and decisively robbed them of an issue. However,
the setback they suffered was only temporary. For what Sonia took away
with one hand, she restored with the other. She appointed a little-known
Kanpur MP Sriprakash Jaiswal-a
member of the shortlived Congress (Tiwari) that has since 1997 merged
with the Congress-as Khurshid's successor and gave a new handle to the
Prasada camp. "I never demanded Khurshid's removal. My focus was
the revival of the Congress," asserts Prasada.
Jaiswal's
elevation has unequivocally validated the dissident group's argument that
Sonia was allowing the Congress(T) members to purge the party of its loyalists-the
partymen who never left the organisation-in next month's elections. To
an extent, the sacking confirmed the partymen's suspicion that the party
president and her aides were working to a game plan to establish a Sonia
Congress, comprising exclusively those who had left the party to form
the Congress(T) in 1995 to destabilise then prime minister P.V. Narasimha
Rao. With Jaiswal's emergence, the dissidents are confident that they
will be able to mobilise support of partymen across the country on the
Tiwari group issue. They also hope to capitalise on the admission by the
Supreme Court of a petition challenging Sonia's election. Says a rebel
leader: "We are keeping our ear to the ground. We will finalise a
candidate to contest against Sonia in the next fortnight after consulting
like-minded leaders from other states.''
AUDACIOUS
MOVE: Jaiswal's appointment is the first audacious move by the Tiwari
group to capture a state unit. Till recently, the group had been content
with cornering posts of returning officers in the crucial states of Uttar
Pradesh and Bihar that elect 275 of the 1,055 All India Congress Committee
(AICC) delegates. While the AICC delegates exclusively elect 12 of the
23 CWC members, they form the electoral college to elect the Congress
president along with 8,099 PCC delegates. Party circles reckon that Khurshid
was sacked as a result of the Tiwari group's machinations. Khurshid had
annoyed the group by attempting to forge his own faction in the PCC. Senior
Tiwari group leaders such as N.D. Tiwari and Arjun Tiwari upped their
ante and persuaded Sonia to doubt Khurshid's ability to help her win the
elections unanimously. "Last week Khurshid refused to endorse the
Tiwari groupie-packed list of district returning officers (DROS) and it
was the last straw for the high command," says a state leader. A
Sonia aide argues that the PCC president should be above factional politics.
"Parallel rallies organised by Prasada in the state went against
Khurshid," he says.
Nevertheless,
the manner in which Sonia got rid of Khurshid has shocked partymen. "Sonia
does not trust anyone who has not been in the Congress (T). As for Jaiswal,
I think we have bid goodbye to vote politics in Uttar Pradesh," says
a leader. Others are worried about the impact of the sacking on the minority
communities. "While the BJP is wooing the Muslims, we have been junking
our Muslim leaders in the past two months," rues a former MP. A senior
Sonia aide denies that she is promoting only the Tiwari group. "In
Uttar Pradesh, 80 per cent of Congressmen followed Tiwari out of the party,"
he says. However, senior leaders feel that accommodating the Tiwari group
members in party posts would demoralise ordinary party workers. A CWC
member cites declining party membership-from 45 million in 1997 to 22
million this year-as proof of disinterest in enrolment of new members.
The
turf war between the loyalists and the Tiwari group has also dampened
the enthusiasm of middle-level leaders. "To become an AICC delegate
one has to spend a minimum of
Rs 75,000 to enroll 800 active members and no one wanted to risk that
kind of money for nothing," says a PCC functionary. For instance,
Haryana Congress Legislature Party leader Bhajan Lal did not enroll members
as he was not keen on acquiring a stake in the PCC. At the same time,
in states like Maharashtra, factional leaders are using the polls to score
a point over rivals. Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh paraded 10 ministers
and MLAs before Congress Central Election Authority Chairman R.N. Mirdha
to get more DROS than PCC President Govindrao Adik. Which means that while
the party may have no new recruit, old hands will never lose interest
in acquiring leverage in the time-worn party apparatus.
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