Though Sonia Gandhi remains at the helm, the duo of Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra represent the new high command and are driving change in the grand old party.
The Congress, which had been lying low after electoral reverses in Assam, Kerala, Puducherry and West Bengal, has suddenly got into an overdrive and is deciding long-pending issues to prepare ground for the 2022 contests.
Though Sonia Gandhi remains at the helm, the duo of Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra represent the new high command and are driving change in the grand old party.
Keeping in mind the assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Goa and Gujarat in 2022, the Gandhi siblings have started a process to revamp the various state units, bringing in fresh faces in the process.
The party issues had been calling for attention for long but their resolution got delayed, partly due to Covid-19 restrictions and partly due to the leadership’s inaction after suffering the 2019 national poll loss.
That situation more or less continued over the past months when the leadership simply watched infighting in the Punjab unit intensify.
However, a quick turn of events in July saw the high command suddenly announce the name of cricketer-turned-humorist-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu as the new state unit head, much against the wishes of chief minister Amarinder Singh.
Earlier, the leadership had been warned that para-dropping Sidhu just seven months ahead of the crucial 2022 assembly polls could annoy the chief minister and dent the party’s prospects.
Moreover, Sidhu had a BJP connection and had joined the Congress only in 2017 while Amarinder was a veteran who had led the party to several victories in the past, the chief minister’s camp argued.
The Congress has certainly taken a gamble in Sidhu but the party has also got a new and younger face to present among the voters just in case anti-incumbency affects the chief minister’s popularity.
Rahul’s intervention led to Amarinder and Navjot patching up but the moot point is would they be able to take on the opposition, which appears to be in a disarray, together.
The flip side of the Punjab gamble is that if infighting in the state unit continues, it can cost the party dear.
Rajasthan
After resolving the tiff in Punjab, the leadership has turned its attention to another problem state Rajasthan, where a power tussle has been ongoing between chief minister Ashok Gehlot and his former deputy Sachin Pilot.
In August 2020, Pilot had led a group of lawmakers to rebel against the chief minister and may have been inclined to join the BJP.
However, a deft handling of the crisis by Priyanka calmed down the younger leader, who was assured that a special panel would look into the concerns raised by him.
Nothing much happened on that front for almost a year but, of late, political activity has picked up in the Rajasthan Congress. Instructed by Rahul, AICC in charge of the state Ajay Maken is talking to the party lawmakers and a Cabinet expansion and changes in the state unit are on the cards to accommodate the dissenters and resolve the differences.
Hill states
The two poll-bound hill states of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh too are on the leadership’s radar.
A revamped team was recently named in Uttarakhand by installing Ganesh Godiyal as the new state unit chief.
The party also named former state unit chief Pritam Singh as the new leader in the assembly after the passing away of veteran Indira Hridayesh due to Covid-19 recently.
Ganesh has the blessings of former chief minister Harish Rawat, who has been named as chief of the campaign committee, an indication that he would play a key role ahead of the coming elections.
Given the state BJP is in a disarray, with three chief ministers in the past five years, Rahul senses an opportunity to regain Uttarakhand next year.
In Himachal Pradesh, the leadership has asked the state leaders not to take any advantage of the power vacuum that has emerged after the passing away of former six-term chief minister Virbhadra Singh.
Even while the former chief minister was in hospital, three senior leaders from the Virbhadra camp, notably Asha Kumari, Leader of the Opposition Mukesh Agnihotri and Sudhir Sharma reportedly met in Una and claimed the backing of leaders from 52 assembly seats, in a bid to claim an upper hand in the party.
Coastal states
The leadership is close to revamping the unit in poll-bound Goa, where Rahul’s aide and state unit chief Girish Chodankar, AICC in charge Dinesh Gundu Rao and leader in the assembly Digambar Kamat are gearing up for the next year’s fight.
Taking an early decision, the leadership has also approved an alliance with the Goa Forward Party.
Earlier, the Congress had sought disqualification of its 10 lawmakers who had defected to the BJP in 2019. The move helped the BJP gain a majority in a House of 40 lawmakers. After the Assembly Speaker dismissed the petitions, the issue is now in the High Court of Bombay and Goa.
The leadership is also in the process of revamping the unit in poll-bound Gujarat where the party recently lost AICC in charge late Rajeev Satav to Covid-19.
Besides appointing a new AICC incharge, the leadership also wants to replace state unit chief Amit Chavda and leader in the assembly Paresh Dhanani as the two leaders had offered to resign following the party’s poor show in the civic polls.
Stern message
Apart from rejigging the teams in poll-going states, the leadership has also asked senior leaders in Haryana, Maharashtra and Karnataka to avoid factional fights which could harm the party.
Rahul is trying to restructure the Haryana unit while trying to balance the rival factions of Jat leader and former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and state unit chief Kumari Selja, a Dalit leader.
Kumari Selja, a former union minister, and a Gandhi family loyalist, got the charge of Haryana in 2019 following the exit of former state unit chief Ashok Tanwar, who had a regular power tussle with Hooda after being deployed by Rahul in 2014.
The former party chief recently summoned Maharashtra unit chief Nana Patole and told him not to make any provocative remarks against Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar, the key architect of the Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress ruling coalition.
Concerned that Karnataka unit chief DK Shiva Kumar and leader in the assembly K Siddaramaiah have been at loggerheads, Rahul summoned the two leaders and asked them to work unitedly towards strengthening the party in the southern state where the ruling BJP has tried to quell dissent by replacing BS Yediyurappa with Basavaraj Bommai as chief minister.
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