New Delhi: Days after the Congress Working Committee met to discuss the party’s dismal performance in the state elections in the five states of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa, Manipur and Punjab — results of which were announced last week — dissenting Congress leader Kapil Sibal hit out at the party’s top leadership again, claiming it was “living in cuckoo land” and spoke of the need for “Sab ki Congress” (everyone’s Congress).
In a hard-hitting interview to The Indian Express, Sibal, who is part of the protesting group of 23 members within the party (often referred to as the G23 leaders), pointed at the constant ‘exodus’ of Congress leaders and the party’s inability “to connect with the electorate”.
Sibal claimed the “real problem” the Congress was confronting that “there is absence of accountability, decreasing acceptability and little attempt to increase accessibility” since 2014.
“We have suffered humiliating defeats from time to time… In Uttar Pradesh, we have 2.33 per cent of the vote share. This doesn’t surprise me. We are unable to connect with the electorate. We are unable to lead from the front, unable to reach out to people. Our accessibility is the subject matter of public debate,” he said.
Sibal said the poll results — the Congress failed to win in any of the five states — did not come as a surprise to him.
“The results never surprised me. We have been going downhill since 2014. We have lost state after state. Even where we succeeded we were not able to keep our flock together. In the meantime, there has been an exodus of some key people… It is really interesting to note that since 2014 about 177 MPs and MLAs and 222 candidates have left the Congress. No other political party has seen this kind of exodus,” he said.
The CWC meet
Sibal said the outcome of he meeting of the Congress’ top decision making body Sunday, “did not surprise” him either.
During the meeting, the party had unanimously accepted responsibility for the electoral loss and announced that Sonia Gandhi will continue to lead the party.
“What happened in the CWC yesterday also did not surprise me. For a party after eight years, since 2014, to say that we will have a Chintan Shivir to find out the reasons for this debacle, if for eight years a political party and the leadership is not aware of the reasons for its decline; is awaiting for a Chintan Shivir to find out, is living in cuckoo land: Keeping its eyes shut to the reality that confronts us. The Congress represents a thought process. The word Congress comes from togetherness,” Sibal remarked.
Reiterating the need for reform within the Congress and for an alternate leadership aside from the Gandhis, he warned that the party “won’t survive if it is business as usual”.
“The people in the CWC, the prominent leaders of our party in the CWC barring a few exceptions, feel maybe genuinely, that without the Gandhi family, it’s not possible for the Congress to survive. That’s a possible point of view. It’s not a point of view that many of us share… We, some of us, tried very hard to convey to the leadership that it is time to reform our processes and revive the Congress and take it to its original glory. I speak today not because I have any angst against any individual. Not because I am anti-A, B or C. I speak today because I am pro-Congress. I will never, will never join another party and over my dead body, the BJP,” Sibal elaborated.
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Want ‘Sab ki Congress’, not ‘Ghar ki Congress’
On the question of whether he believes that Gandhis should step aside, Sibal pushed the idea of “Sab ki Congress”, which he described as “getting together all those people in India who don’t want the BJP” and said he will fight for it till his last breath.
“Mamata Banerjee was a Congresswoman. Sharad Pawar was a Congressman. All Congressmen who have moved away, they must come together. There are millions of people in this country who don’t belong to any political party, but whose thought processes are aligned to the Congress thought process of inclusiveness, of togetherness, of peace, of harmony, of change for the future, and for the betterment of ordinary people…doing away with poverty, doing away with illiteracy. There are millions of people who believe in that. They are also through their thought processes Congressmen. That’s what I call ‘sab ki Congress’. Some people have expressed their views that there can be no Congress without A, B or C. Obviously, they believe that ‘sab ki Congress’ cannot survive without ‘ghar ki Congress’. That’s the challenge. This is not against A, B or C,” he explained.
Answering the question on who should lead the party, he said, “It can be anybody who is acceptable to an elected AICC, not a nominated AICC.”
“The Congress party is not using the assets that it has for the rejuvenation of the party. If the Congress party thinks like that, how can that Congress party ever hope to reclaim its past glory? At an individual level, there are no problems with the leadership. They are very courteous, very nice. But we are talking about politics,” he clarified.
Problems plaguing Congress
Kapil Sibal touched upon the problem of infighting within the Congress, the centralisation of power and the party’s absence on the ground level.
“It’s not a battle that we should fight within the Congress. The Congress should be together to fight the Modi regime. But if you can’t even keep your house in order, how will you fight the Modi regime?” he noted.
“What we see is the absence of organization at the ground level. No real attempts to remedy that have been taken in the past. All powers are concentrated in the leadership. No decentralization of power on the ground. Even the appointments of PCCs and DCCs…names are given to the leadership and they are appointed. They don’t have direct contact with them. In this power structure, therefore, the organization is bereft of any vision. This is my personal belief. And this is true of all political parties. Morality has become irrelevant in politics,” Sibal said.
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