Congress story: Another poll drubbing, fresh reform vows, no real intent

At its Belgaum session on December 26 last year, the Congress party pledged to dedicate 2025 to revitalising its atrophying organisation. This expression of intent, although heard within the party ad nauseam over the past decade as the Congress hurtled from one electoral disaster to the next, was projected by sundry party apparatchiks as a portent of radical organisational reform.

Nearly two months on, the Congress has begun its organisational revamp following yet another humiliating electoral drubbing – this time in Delhi. There are, however, clear signs that its intent for revitalisation notwithstanding, the party remains hostage to its old affliction of sycophancy around its first family – the Gandhis – and of choosing cautious reform over radical transformation.

A Congress shake-up

On February 14, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge approved what is being touted within the party as the first of several changes being envisaged in the higher echelons of the organisation. The preceding months had seen the Congress chief rejigging and expanding the ever-growing ranks of AICC secretaries, appointing some new state Congress chiefs and dissolving party units in states such as Himachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. But last Friday’s exercise was ostensibly about “big” changes.

Kharge benched six AICC general secretaries and in-charges of various states while roping in two new general secretaries – former Chhattisgarh chef minister Bhupesh Baghel and Rajya Sabha MP Syed Naseer Hussain at the All India Congress Committee. Nine ‘new’ in-charges were also appointed to handle party affairs in various states.

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Assigning responsibility

Then, on Wednesday (February 19), Kharge and Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi summoned a meeting of all 30 AICC general secretaries and state in-charges, including those newly appointed. The marathon meeting, which went on for over seven hours, saw Kharge bluntly telling party functionaries that henceforth they would be “held accountable for the organisation and election results of the states under your charge”.

The following day, most newly appointed state in-charges had, per Kharge’s instructions, left Delhi for capitals of the states they were given charge of to begin the process of interaction with state party units on organisational reforms and future political activities.

A way ahead?

For those unfamiliar with the machinations within the AICC, this hectic intra-party activity may adorn a visage of real reform. But is that really the case? Do the organisational changes provide a glide-path for the Congress’ rejuvenation?

Party leaders, including present and past AICC functionaries The Federal spoke to, were largely of the view that the revamp was a case of “half-measures” that essentially “redistributed work among loyalists of Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi and the Congress president”.

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‘Not enough’

Senior Congress leader and Katihar MP Tariq Anwar said: “It is good the Congress high command has taken some action but much more needs to be done; there is a need for more radical measures and strict action against those who have either damaged the party willingly or unwillingly or proved to be non-performers.”

Adding that the AICC reshuffle should have been “more comprehensive”, Anwar said: “The party needs a complete overhaul and merely proximity to some leaders should not be the criteria for being given posts. We need to reward performance, ideological commitment, experience and organisational skills.”

Repeated failures

Most party leaders The Federal spoke to welcomed Kharge’s decision to relieve Deepak Babaria, Rajeev Shukla, Mohan Prakash and Bharatsinh Solanki from their role as general secretary/in-charge (in-charges Devender Yadav and Ajoy Kumar were also benched).

Babaria, Shukla, Prakash and Solanki had all been accused repeatedly by leaders of states they handled of either rank incompetence or acting in a brazenly partisan manner in handling the internecine factional feuds of the party. However, those handpicked to replace these office bearers, sources said, infused little confidence of things getting better for the party.

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Old wine in new bottle

A senior leader from Haryana also said the high command must “put an end to our revolving door policy for non-performers”, explaining that “people like Babaria keep failing in every task, they are also sacked after electoral defeats but after some cooling period, they are brought back and given charge of some other state”.

This leader, a sitting MP, cited the example of new appointees Rajani Patil and Harish Chaudhary, alleging “both of them have been in-charges in the past and were complete failures but they have been reassigned important roles; when their past failures are widely known in the party, why do they keep getting new responsibilities?”

Sonia loyalists

The list of new appointees includes Bhupesh Baghel and Naseer Hussain and as general secretaries in-charge of Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir respectively. The newly appointed in-charges are Rajani Patil (Himachal Pradesh and Chandigarh), BK Hariprasad (Haryana), Harish Chaudhary (Madhya Pradesh), Girish Chodankar (Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry), Ajay Kumar Lallu (Orissa), K Raju (Jharkhand), Meenakshi Natarajan (Telangana), Saptagiri Ulaka (Manipur, Tripura, Sikkim and Nagaland) and Krishna Allavaru.

The reshuffle marked the return of Sonia Gandhi loyalists Hariprasad and Patil – the two replace Babaria and Rajeev Shukla as in-charges of Haryana and Himachal respectively – to key responsibilities at the AICC.

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Allavaru for Bihar

Chaudhary, Chodankar, Raju, Ulaka, Natarajan and Allavaru are known to enjoy Rahul’s confidence. Chaudhary had earlier served as party in-charge for Punjab when the Congress lost the state to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). Chodankar, as Goa Congress chief, had presided over the party’s rout in the 2022 Assembly elections only to be promoted the following year as party in-charge of several north-eastern states where again the Congress was routed in state elections.

Allavaru has, so far, been Rahul’s pointsman for handling Congress’ frontal organisations such as the Youth Congress and the NSUI and has neither electoral experience nor political heft. He has now been given the tall task of handling Bihar, the forever politically surcharged state where elections are due later this year and where the Congress, a fringe player, has to deal with senior ally Tejashwi Yadav’s RJD in the seat-sharing talks that are likely to be anything but smooth.

The Natarajan mystery

Natarajan, who earned Rahul’s trust during her stint as Lok Sabha MP from Madhya Pradesh’s Mandsaur between 2009 and 2014 on account of her austere lifestyle and long stints in the party’s frontal organisations, sources said, is increasingly consulted by the Rae Bareli MP on various party matters. Her party colleagues from MP, however, are perplexed over the prominence she has gained considering that in Mandsaur and adjoining areas, where she has had a say in the party’s ticket allocation for various elections, the Congress has shown little revival.

Baghel and Lallu, sources said, were Priyanka’s picks. Baghel’s over-confidence and his raging turf war with party veteran TS Singh Deo had cost the Congress its much anticipated victory in the 2023 Chhattisgarh Assembly elections; he subsequently lost the Lok Sabha battle from Rajnandgaon. Those taints have obviously not prevented him from being given key tasks by the party high command since, be it as senior observer during last year’s Maharashtra elections or now as general secretary in-charge of Punjab.

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From UP to Odisha

For Lallu, the new role as in-charge of Orissa is a long-awaited rehabilitation and, as a party leader put it, “a reward for owning responsibility for the party’s worst ever performance in Uttar Pradesh (in 2022) and resigning as the UP Congress chief despite that campaign being handled entirely by Priyanka Gandhi”.

Whether the combative grassroots leader from Uttar Pradesh’s Kushinagar is able to make a mark as the party’s in-charge of Orissa, a state where the Congress has been on a steady tailspin, or will have to simply defer to the wishes of the high command and the newly appointed state chief, Bhakt Charan Das, is anybody’s guess.

“He (Lallu) may be an aggressive grassroots leader in UP but he doesn’t seem to know anything about Orissa. The party should have chosen a more experienced hand or continued with Ajoy Kumar as the in-charge; I have nothing against Lallu but given his lack of understanding of Orissa, I fear he will prove to be another Jitendra Singh (presently the party’s in-charge of Assam); this experimentation needs to stop,” a former Odisha Congress MLA told The Federal.

Kharge’s man

Hussain, previously attached as secretary to the office of the Congress president, was the sole ‘Kharge nominee’ on the list and is now only the second Muslim – Bengal in-charge Ghulam Ahmed Mir being the other – in the current list of party general secretaries.

While the party’s new appointees fail to inspire confidence, the bigger worry, a section of party leaders said, was the continuation of some office bearers in roles new and old.

Anger against Venugopal

“The first head to roll should have been that of KC Venugopal whose tenure as GSO (general secretary -- organisation) has seen the party losing over 20 Assembly and two Lok Sabha elections. But he is our most powerful office bearer, some say even more powerful than the Congress president, because Rahul trusts him blindly. Every decision or appointment in the party is routed through him but no one knows what he really does except tailing Rahul everywhere. He has no organisational skills, no electoral capital, can’t speak either Hindi or English, and has single-handedly wrecked the organisation,” said a senior party MP who was also Venugopal’s ministerial colleague in the UPA regime.

Several other party leaders The Federal spoke to agreed that “no AICC reshuffle will be meaningful while Venugopal remains GSO”, with one party functionary going to the extent of dubbing the Alappuzha MP as the “most incompetent general secretary in the party’s recent history”.

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Kanhaiya rated poorly

Similar consternation is also palpable at the continuation of general secretaries Avinash Pande and Jitendra Singh as well as Kanhaiya Kumar, who are in-charge of Uttar Pradesh, Assam and the NSUI respectively. “Pande and Bhanwar (Jitendra Singh) do not have a single success to their credit. Every state they have handled, they have made a mess and the party has suffered due to their incompetence.

“Kanhaiya on the other hand may be a good speaker but he lacks the humility needed to work with a team; in the short time that he has spent in our party, he has rubbed so many people the wrong way because he behaves as if he is a big leader already and unlike Srinivas (former Youth Congress chief), who transformed the IYC into a very aggressive and active party frontal, Kanhaiya has done nothing to rejuvenate the NSUI,” a former AICC general secretary said.

Wasting Priyanka

Many also wonder why Priyanka Gandhi, who was quietly relieved of her charge of Uttar Pradesh after the Congress’ 2022 Assembly election rout but continues to be a general secretary without portfolio, was not being assigned any specific role. Sources said the Congress president and Rahul are keen to set up a new election strategy department in the party – a yet unfulfilled pledge of the 2022 Udaipur Declaration – with Priyanka at its helm.

“Kharge and Rahul have discussed this with Priyanka on at least three occasions but there is still no clarity on whether she is willing to take that responsibility. Rahul has repeatedly said that election management is our greatest weakness. Even at the meeting of general secretaries and in-charges this week, we spent a bulk of time discussing this issue. We are wasting Priyanka by not assigning her this role,” a senior party functionary said.