Following the Congress's drubbing in the five Assembly elections, party president Sonia Gandhi has decided to convene a Congress Working Committee meet soon to introspect the results.
Ahead of that, on Friday, a few leaders from the 'Group of 23' that had earlier questioned the party leadership and sought organisational overhaul, met at the residence of the former leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad in New Delhi. Among those who met Azad were party MPs Anand Sharma, Kapil Sibal and Manish Tewari.
According to India Today, G-23 members have demanded a new Congress president “as soon as possible”. They have asked for speeding up the electoral process for the same.
Sources, who attended the meeting, said that during the meet a few leaders suggested that they should skip the upcoming Congress Working Committee because, in the meeting, the chief ministers, Youth Congress leaders and presidents of frontal organisations only praise the Gandhi family and do not discuss any serious issues.
Sharma added that if the leaders speak assertively in the extended meeting, several sycophants oppose them. Therefore, it is necessary that only CWC people should attend the meeting.
According to an Indian Express report, the leaders agreed that the party was staring at an “existential crisis” and it will sink further if credible corrective actions are not taken. It cannot be business as usual, some argued.
Asked how they plan to take it forward, a leader said: “If we don’t take it forward, we sink. We are sitting in a boat in the turbulent ocean of Indian politics where water is gushing in from all directions. So, we can either submerge or some of us will try to take it back to the shore,” he said.
Congress G-23
In August 2020, 23 senior Congress leaders addressed a letter to interim party chief Sonia Gandhi requesting immediate and active leadership, organisational rejig, according to MoneyControl.
In the letter, the G-23 sought an overhaul within the party in view of frequent failures at the elections.
The demand intensified over time, and the dissenters including Ghulam Nabi Azad and Kapil Sibal continued to debate and defy the party position from time to time.
Who are the members
Congress G-23's original members were: Ghulam Nabi Azad, Kapil Sibal, Shashi Tharoor, Manish Tiwari, Anand Sharma, PJ Kurien, Renuka Chaudhary, Milind Deora, Mukul Wasnik, Jitin Prasada, Bhupendra Singh Hooda, Rajinder Kaur Bhattal, M Veerappa Moily, Prithviraj Chavan, Ajay Singh, Raj Babbar, Arvind Singh Lovely, Kaul Singh Thakur, Kuldeep Sharma, Yoganand Shastri, Sandeep Dixit and Vivek Tankha. Many of them have been Union ministers, chief ministers, or the party's state unit chiefs.
What do they want
After the loss of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections acting as a catalyst, several Congress leaders believed that party-level reforms were need of the hour. Amid the thinning base of the grand-old party, leaders demanded a democratic setup within the national party as it struggled to have a leader, post-Sonia Gandhi’s resignation.
Dimming prospects
The Congress drew a blank in all the five states whose results were declared on 10 March. The Aam Aadmi Party wrested power from the Congress in Punjab, while in Uttar Pradesh, Congress managed to win just two seats this year, five fewer than what it had won in 2017. In Goa, Manipur and Uttarakhand too, the party failed to topple the ruling BJP.
Congress has steadily been losing elections since 2012. The 2014 general election dealt Congress an electoral punch that knocked the wind out of its sails. In 2019 then-party president Rahul Gandhi lost the party’s turf Amethi to BJP’s Smriti Irani. According to an NDTV report, a total of 222 electoral candidates left the Congress to join other parties during polls held between 2014-2021 while 177 MPs and MLAs quit the party during this period, as per the analysis of the candidates' poll affidavits by the National Election Watch and the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR).
Soon after the results were released on Thursday, party MP Shashi Tharoor had said it is time to reaffirm the idea of India that the Congress has stood for and reform the party's organisational leadership in a manner that will reignite those ideas and inspire the people.
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March 12, 2022 at 11:08AM
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