“K hud kiye tum ne apni diwaron me surakh,
Ab koi jhaank raha hai tou shikayet kaisi?”
(You made holes in your walls. Now if someone is peeping through, why should you complain?)
That’s Ghulam Nabi Azad in his recently released autobiography Azaad. The former Congress veteran is “summarising the predicament” of the party whose high command “marginalised and cut to size its own popular state leaders and supported weak leadership”, leading to the party’s eventual destruction in states. In Uttar Pradesh, Indira Gandhi sacked chief minister Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna in 1975 and Rajiv Gandhi replaced CM Vir Bahadur Singh with Narayan Dutt Tiwari in 1988. In Bihar, Indira sacked CM Jagannath Mishra in 1983 and Sonia Gandhi removed JB Patnaik as Odisha CM in 1999. Rahul Gandhi overturned Sonia Gandhi’s decision to replace former Assam CM Tarun Gogoi with Himanta Biswa Sarma. And then there was former Punjab CM Capt. Amarinder Singh’s insult and ouster just four months before the election.
The Congress seems to be drilling a similar surakh or hole in Rajasthan now. On 9 April, Sachin Pilot announced that he would hold a day-long fast on 11 April to protest the Ashok Gehlot government’s inaction on corruption charges against the previous Vasundhara Raje-led government. The Congress high command has, however, signalled its reluctance to go for a change of guard barely eight months ahead of the election.
In a statement on Sunday evening, All India Congress Committee general secretary (communications) Jairam Ramesh praised the Gehlot government for implementing several schemes and taking initiatives that “impacted the people profoundly”. “The Congress will seek a renewed mandate from the people on the strength of these landmark achievements and the collective efforts of our organisation,” Ramesh said without making any reference to Pilot’s announcement. The AICC’s statement couldn’t have been clearer: The Congress is preparing to go into elections with the Gehlot government’s ‘achievements’ as its central plank and it wants Pilot to pipe down and put in ‘collective’ efforts.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) may be a divided house in the desert state, but the internecine war in the ruling party is likely to only add to anti-incumbency. The state’s voters have changed governments every five years since 1998. The Congress high command seems to be wary of repeating the Punjab experiment where it backed maverick cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu who along with his camp followers kept sniping at then CM Capt. Amarinder Singh day after day. Singh was finally ousted and the Congress decimated in the assembly election of March 2022.
Unlike Sidhu, Pilot has many sympathisers in the party today. They believe that Pilot got a raw deal in 2018 when he was denied the chief ministership even after doing all the hard work as state Congress president for five years.
Subsequent months and years have witnessed an intense battle of one-upmanship and brinkmanship between him and Gehlot. And both have had their share of strategic blunders.
In 2020, Pilot launched a month-long rebellion against Gehlot and brought his government virtually on the edge of the precipice. The Gandhis persuaded Pilot to relent with a promise to install him as the chief minister later. The young leader did lose a bit of sheen.
Gehlot called him a ‘gaddar’ (traitor) who tried to destabilise the Congress-led government to help the BJP. To be fair to Pilot, no evidence of his complicity with the BJP has emerged so far. If Gehlot took a moral high ground after Pilot’s rebellion, he also fell from favour after he stalled the high command’s attempt to transfer power to Pilot in September 2022.
Pilot’s do-or-die gambit
Pilot’s announcement of fast marks the escalation of this war. But, unlike in Punjab, the Gandhis seem to be reluctant to oust the incumbent to install the challenger. Gehlot, who let go of the coveted post of the national Congress president to retain his chief ministerial chair, is unlikely to go down quietly if the Gandhis try to remove him. After drawing a lot of flak for the Punjab fiasco, the Gandhis are diffident. Another evidence of this is coming from Madhya Pradesh where the Kamal Nath-led state unit has virtually declared him the party’s chief ministerial candidate for the November-December election. The Gandhis have chosen to look the other way. In older days, MP Congress’ move would have been taken as defiance of the high command.
The Gandhis had earlier deployed election strategist Sunil Kanugolu in Rajasthan, who has now returned to New Delhi. Party insiders say that as per internal surveys, in the current scenario, the Congress could win just 45-55 seats in the 200-member assembly. Kanugolu was said to be in favour of a change of guard. Gehlot has ensured his exit from Rajasthan.
Pilot is a sharp politician. He would know about the Gandhis’ diffidence much before others. Why to escalate the matter against Gehlot then? What is Pilot up to? He certainly wouldn’t expect the Gandhis to go for a big change in Rajasthan barely four weeks before the Karnataka election. Is Pilot building pressure on the high command to take a call on Rajasthan right after the Karnataka results are out on 13 May? It’s easier hoped than achieved. For a moment, let’s forget about Sunday’s AICC statement. Maybe we are reading too much between the lines.
Hypothetically, if the Gandhis decide to remove Gehlot and install Pilot as CM in mid-May, the latter will have less than six months to prove his mettle. He would then find himself in a situation like Charanjit Singh Channi who replaced Amarinder Singh as Punjab CM and got just about five months to prove himself amid turmoil in his party. Channi failed miserably and went into political oblivion soon. In the said hypothetical situation, the Congress high command would also have to count on Gehlot’s loyalty and hope that he wouldn’t queer the pitch for the party in the November-December election. But that would be the height of optimism. Besides, would Pilot even want to be in a Channi-like situation, which would have a big bearing on his political future?
Pilot in catch-22
As it is, Gehlot seems to be in full control. This has left Pilot in a catch-22 situation. If he doesn’t push for a change of guard, an uncertain future awaits him.
Suppose the Congress retains power in the 2023 election, Gehlot will claim victory of his governance model and rule the roost, leaving Pilot to nurse his wounds on the sidelines. And if the Congress loses the election, Gehlot will blame it all on internal rebellion spearheaded by Pilot. The 45-year-old leader has a long way to go in politics but the prospects of five years in the opposition—with little hope of the party coming to power at the Centre any time soon—are daunting for any ambitious politician.
That explains Pilot’s latest move to escalate his attack on Gehlot. Silence is no option. He may very well be in the CM’s chair for six months and make it count. Or so he may think. Odds are stacked against him, of course. Jairam Ramesh’s statement reflected the Gandhis’ line of thinking. Pilot would have sensed it long back. If he is still sniping at Gehlot, he must have a plan B that we don’t know of.
Meanwhile, when you talk to Ghulam Nabi Azad’s former colleagues, who are still in the Congress, you find many of them in a different predicament— something captured in another couplet from Kashinath Singh’s brilliant satire, Kashi ka Assi:
“Congress ka hukkah toh kab ka bujh chukaa,
Ek hum hain ki gurguraaye jaa rahe hain.”
(Congress’ hookah got extinguished long back; and here we are still trying to blow it)
Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)