State Unit Rivalry, Not Discord With Central Leadership, Pushed Young Congress Rebels To Cross Over

All of them became restless mainly because they did not get a fair share in the state power structure or received due importance in the party affairs.

Promising young leaders leaving the Congress for greener pastures usually gets painted as a sign of weak central leadership whereas factional fights in the state units are the real culprit.

Former Lok Sabha member from Silchar in Assam and ex-All-India Mahila Congress chief Sushmita Dev, who has moved to the Trinamool Congress, is the latest in a series of exits that have given bad press to the Congress since the party lost power at the Centre in 2014.

Before Dev, other young leaders who made similar moves and joined other parties are Jitin Prasada in Uttar Pradesh, Jyotiraditya Scindia in Madhya Pradesh and Pradyot Manikya Deb Barman in Tripura.

Though Sachin Pilot in Rajasthan is still in, he was almost on the verge of leaving the party last year and can safely be included in the list of such young leaders.

All of them became restless mainly because they did not get a fair share in the state power structure or received due importance in the party affairs.

When the Congress was in power at the Centre, three of these promising youngsters, Jyotiraditya, Jitin and Sachin, were made ministers in the UPA I and II governments to prepare them for future roles.

After Congress lost power, they played key roles in the party.

In the post-2014 period, the party’s chips remained down and the organization faced long years of struggle before Congress could hope to regain power at the Centre.

This, in effect, meant a long wait for the sunshine days and forced these young leaders to focus more on consolidating their positions in the respective states, a sensible political thing to do.

Unfortunately, factional fights and an equally ambitious layer of veterans at the top in the states slowed down the growth of these young leaders and added to their anxiety.

Had they remained a bit more patient and waited for the situation to become favourable, the young leaders would certainly have got what they aspired for. In the process, they would have also strengthened their positions in the party.

However, they made their career choices and jumped the ship.

Sushmita

She headed the All-India Mahila Congress but had differences with former Assam unit chief Ripun Bora over alliance with AIUDF and distribution of tickets in the Barak Valley, her area of influence. She also cited lack of respect given to her by state leaders as one of the reasons to quit the Congress and move to the TMC.

Jitin Prasada

After losing the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, he had been sidelined in the UP unit. Last year, he was given charge of West Bengal just a few months ahead of the assembly elections in 2021. He had started his own Brahmin Chetna Parishad to build up a community support base while still being in the Congress.

Jyotiraditya Scindia

He had been assured the post of Madhya Pradesh state unit chief by Rahul Gandhi after veteran Kamal Nath was chosen as chief minister in 2018. In 2019, he was given charge of half of UP along with Priyanka Gandhi Vadra to revive the party.

Scindia felt sidelined in the state unit where former chief minister Digvijay Singh worked closely with Kamal Nath. The youngster got impatient, joined the BJP, helped the saffron party come to power, was sent to the Rajya Sabha and recently became a union minister.

Pradyot

He resigned as Tripura unit chief following his differences with the state in charge of Luizinho Faleiro and the manner in which the party was being run in the north-eastern state.

Sachin Pilot

He was deployed by Rahul to revive the party in Rajasthan after the 2013 poll debacle. He worked hard and resurrected the party, which won the 2018 assembly polls but veteran Ashok Gehlot was made the chief minister and Sachin got to play his deputy. Later, he felt sidelined in the party and government system and led a rebellion in 2020. As a simple party MLA, Pilot still awaits a resolution of the concerns flagged by him.

Political lineage

These young leaders worked hard their way up but it is equally true that the route to their success would have been harder and prolonged sans their political lineage.

Jyotiraditya is the son of former union minister Madhavrao Scindia and belongs to the erstwhile royal family of Gwalior, Jitin is the son of late Jitendra Prasada, a former union minister and party stalwart from UP, Pradyot is the scion of the erstwhile Manikya royal family of Tripura, Sushmita’s father late Santosh Mohan Dev was a former union minister and Sachin is the son of former union minister Rajesh Pilot.

Besides the benefits of political lineage, these youngsters were also in the good books of party chief Sonia Gandhi as well as Rahul Gandhi, who was being groomed for the future.

Sushmita was given a Lok Sabha ticket and later appointed women’s wing chief at Rahul’s behest.

Jitin was one of the G-23 leaders who wrote a letter to Sonia last year urging sweeping reforms in the organization and a full-time elected party president. Yet, in the reshuffle that followed, he was made an AICC general secretary in charge of West Bengal.

Jyotiraditya had direct access to Rahul and was a close aide of the former party chief. Pradyot too had the ears of Rahul and was the key person in Tripura.

Though Rahul Gandhi too has benefitted from political lineage, he has always supported the line that the Congress needs to take in more and more persons from non-political backgrounds to make the party more inclusive and develop new leaders.

Leadership

The central leadership may not be directly responsible for the exit of these young leaders but it must take lessons from such episodes which indirectly affect its image at a time when the party is trying to put up the face of strong national opposition.

The central leadership should stress greater harmony in the state units and ask the heads to address the concerns of various leaders in a timely and just manner.