Delhi polls | Congress candidates fight their own battles as top brass deserts campaign

With barely over a week left before campaigning for the February 5 Delhi Assembly polls concludes, a sense of unease, frustration and even anger is palpable among candidates and workers of the Congress in the national capital.

Over the past week, the Congress had planned three public meetings and a padyatra (foot march) of its de facto leader, Rahul Gandhi, across different constituencies only to receive word at the last minute of his inability to participate in them due to ill-health. Rahul’s only public meeting in the national capital this poll season was on January 14 in the Muslim-dominated Seelampur Assembly segment.

Also read: AAP factor in Delhi polls: Congress has an epiphany, Rahul has doubts

Missing in action

The party’s star campaigner and Wayanad MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra hasn’t even started her campaign in Delhi yet and is only expected to address a few public meetings starting next week. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge too has been conspicuous by his absence. Both Kharge and Priyanka, however, made time to address the party’s ‘Jai Bapu, Jai Bhim, Jai Samvidhan’ rally in Karnataka’s Belgaum on January 21.

In contrast, the entire top brass of the AAP has been campaigning aggressively in the national capital with former CM Arvind Kejriwal addressing at least two public meetings daily. On the BJP’s side, while inaugurating a slew of projects in the days leading up to the Election Commission’s announcement of the poll schedule earlier this month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had outlined the contours of his party’s campaign against the AAP. Ever since, BJP leaders, including Union ministers Amit Shah and Rajnath Singh and almost all its chief ministers, have been regularly addressing meetings and rallies.

On January 20, Rahul was to lead a padyatra in the New Delhi Assembly segment where former Delhi CM Sheila Dikshit’s son Sandeep Dikshit is in the fray against AAP convener Arvind Kejriwal. The foot march was called off at short notice and, per Dikshit, “rescheduled for some date after January 26”.

Candidates dejected

On January 22, a sizeable crowd had gathered at the Shahzada Bagh in the Sadar Bazaar constituency to hear Rahul with sundry Congress leaders making repeated announcements of the “imminent arrival” of their “jan-nayak” (people’s hero). After a nearly four-hour wait, the crowd was informed that Rahul can’t make it to the meeting due to ill-health. The following day, the Lok Sabha’s Leader of Opposition was scheduled to address a “massive rally” in Mustafabad, the epicentre of the 2020 Northeast Delhi riots, but again failed to turn up. The same story unfolded the next day in the Madipur constituency where Sachin Pilot had to finally fill in for an absent Rahul.

The embarrassment of the Congress leaders present at each of these venues of “Rahul’s public meetings” was palpable. Even more evident was the disappointment and dejection of some of the Congress candidates present, the party workers and people at large who had hoped for Rahul to finally give the much-needed boost that his party’s fledgling poll campaign desperately requires in its triangular contest against the AAP and the BJP.

“We look like an army abandoned by its commander,” is how a party candidate present at one of the venues explained the repeated “disappearance” of Rahul from these “pre-scheduled” events. “Had any other party leader failed to turn up for campaign repeatedly after confirming his schedule, candidates would have accused him of sabotage and sought disciplinary action by now but with Rahul Gandhi we can’t even do that,” the candidate added.

Also read: Delhi polls: Rahul Gandhi skips another rally; party says he is unwell

Rahul’s no-show

A senior Delhi Congress leader whose son is a candidate in the upcoming polls echoed similar views. “It’s not like he has been taken ill suddenly. We were told he is down with fever and a severe throat infection, so why did his office confirm his availability for the meetings? Our Delhi leadership must have checked with Rahul before announcing the meeting because permissions have to be taken from various authorities for these programs. Were they not told that he is too unwell to attend... one cancellation is understandable but how do we explain four last-minute cancellations in a row to our voters; why will they take us seriously,” the senior leader said.

After Rahul’s no-show at the Mustafabad rally venue, another Congress leader told The Federal, “Our candidates have been going around telling Muslims in Mustafabad that Rahul and our party is their best hope against the communal BJP and the AAP which turned its back on the 2020 riot victims... In Shahzada Bagh and here (Mustafabad), a large number of Muslims had come to hear Rahul; even in the Lok Sabha elections the Muslims voted for us in a big way in the three seats we contested in Delhi... people think he isn’t campaigning because he feels the party will not do well; is this the message Rahul wants voters to go home with when they return from rallies he didn’t turn up for?”

The absence of the high command from the campaign also comes as a major setback for a party cadre already demoralised by the Congress’s shrinking footprint in Delhi. The city-state was among Congress’s last standing citadels until 2013 when the Kejriwal’s AAP crushed it to rubble while an ascendant BJP demolished the party elsewhere in the country with Modi and Shah’s wily stratagems.

Nowhere in race

In the 2015 and 2020 Delhi polls, the Congress couldn’t win a single seat in the 70-member Delhi Assembly. This time round, with the AAP facing palpable anti-incumbency and disillusionment among Muslim and Dalit voters, who collectively are a deciding factor in as many as 20 Assembly seats, the Congress had fancied some revival. That the party chose several of its high profile leaders as its candidates against seemingly invincible AAP leaders gave further hope to the Congress workers that their central leadership was, even if belatedly, prepared to “reclaim Delhi”.

The absence of Kharge, Rahul and Priyanka, so far, has arguably left these workers more demoralised than before. “For the past 10 years, our candidates and Delhi leaders showed little interest in rebuilding the party and they looked towards the high command to do their work. This election, the situation is worse. We have some candidates who are fighting the election with all their might but now it feels like the high command has left them to fend for themselves... if the high command goes missing from the campaign, how do we convince the ordinary voter that we are serious contenders,” Vishnu Kumar, a party worker from Tri Nagar told The Federal.

Another Congress worker, Ashok Vihar resident Amit Goswami, says, “Sandeep Dikshit in New Delhi, Farhad Suri in Jangpura, Anil Chaudhary in Patparganj, Rajesh Lilothia in Seemapuri or even younger leaders like Ragini Nayak in Wazirpur, Mudit Agarwal in Chandni Chowk, Abhishek Dutt in Kasturba Nagar and Arjun Bhadana in Badarpur... they are all working really hard; in many of these seats we felt BJP could slip to the third position if our candidates got the support of Rahul and Priyanka... Our best chance was in Dalit and Muslim seats but now we are nowhere in the race in most such constituencies because the high command is not campaigning... we have been told that they will campaign after January 26, which means they will have only eight days to mobilise support for Congress; how will that be enough?”

Also read: Delhi polls | AAP poster features Rahul in list of ‘dishonest' people; Cong hits back

Disappearing act

While Rahul’s illness may still be a legitimate excuse for his absence from the campaign, no one in the Delhi unit of the party or even in the central leadership has any plausible explanation for the disappearing act that Kharge and Priyanka have pulled on their party’s candidates.

“They will all campaign. You will see a very aggressive campaign from Monday onwards. It is not just their responsibility to mobilise support, all leaders have to do it and they are doing it also. Our senior leaders from across the country have been campaigning... the Telangana CM (Revanth Reddy) was here, DK Shivakumar also came, Sachin Pilot is here... campaigning is a collective responsibility and we are confident the high command will also come to give us their blessing, guidance and support in the last leg of the campaign when voter sentiment actually begins to shape up,” Devender Yadav, the Delhi Congress chief and party candidate from Badli constituency told The Federal.