New Delhi: More than a quarter of the 84 members and invitees of the newly reconstituted Congress Working Committee (CWC) have either never contested or never won a Lok Sabha or assembly election.
Further, about half of those in the CWC lost the last election they contested, either at the state or Lok Sabha level, ThePrint’s analysis of data from the Election Commission (EC) and Ashoka University’s Lok Dhaba — a repository of Indian election results — has shown.
Take for example, A.K. Antony. The former Union defence minister and CWC permanent member won his last election in 2001 — in the Kerala assembly polls. Since then, he has been nominated to the Rajya Sabha multiple times between 2005 and 2022. He has never contested a Lok Sabha election.
Another former Union minister and CWC permanent member, Anand Sharma, has only contested one election in his life, the 1982 Himachal Pradesh polls, which he lost to the BJP’s Daulat Ram. He has never contested a Lok Sabha election and has been nominated to the Rajya Sabha multiple times.
A third former Union minister and CWC permanent invitee with a patchy electoral record is T. Subbarami Reddy. The businessman from Andhra Pradesh won his last election in 1998, when he was elected to the Lok Sabha from Vishakhapatnam. He lost in the 1999 Lok Sabha elections, but was nominated to the Rajya Sabha three times after that.
Another case is that of Avinash Pande, an All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary in charge of Jharkhand and CWC permanent member, who last won an electoral victory during the 1985 Maharashtra polls.
Rajani Patil, the party’s in-charge of the Union territories of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh, last won an election in 1996, and that too on a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ticket, when she was elected to the Lok Sabha from Beed.
Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge reconstituted the CWC, the party’s top decision-making body, last month. Among the 84 people are 39 permanent members, 18 permanent invitees, 14 state and four organisational in-charges, and nine special invitees.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has taken a dig at the opposition party, claiming the poor poll record of many of the CWC members and invitees to be a reflection of the fact that the Congress doesn’t have enough elected representatives.
But according to Alka Lamba, a special invitee to the CWC, the Congress’s top decision-making body is an inclusive one, with representation across communities and ages, where poll performance is not a necessary criterion for inclusion.
“Since 2019 [the last Lok Sabha elections], those who have been fighting on the ground in various states have been chosen to take the fight forward. There was a kind of testing all this while. For example, I was made the Punjab communications head and then Goa communications head. Then I was in Himachal for three months. We were given assignments,” Lamba said.
The Congress leader further said that the CWC is not made up of only those who fight elections — it also needs those who can make others fight elections.
“When you fight elections, someone will see a publicity campaign, some will see a manifesto, others will see logistics and some will take care of the finances. There are those who’ll fight and then there are those who will make them fight.”
She added, “I don’t think it should be an issue if someone didn’t fight an election and (still) reached the CWC. The thing that matters is the amount of contribution to society and loyalty towards the party.”
ThePrint also reached Congress spokesperson and party in-charge for communications Jairam Ramesh for comment over phone. The article will be updated once a response is received.
BJP national spokesperson R.P. Singh, meanwhile, alleged that the Congress “machinery does not have scope to win elections” and that this is borne out by the presence of so many leaders in the CWC who have either never contested or won an election in their political career.
“They mostly have people who have lost elections. Then where will they get people who have won elections? That’s why they have only those people who have lost elections (in the working committee).”
He added: “They don’t have enough elected people to put in their committee and it will continue for some time. The kind of policies they have, it is not possible for them to win elections.”
Political analysts feel, however, that the presence in the working committee of those who may not have contested, or performed well, in Lok Sabha and assembly elections should not be a cause of worry for the Congress.
“The working committee is the apex body of the Congress which is meant for looking at a lot of things and not just deciding how to win elections. It has to look for party funds, party organisation, party structure and other things,” said Sanjay Kumar of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies.
He added that the composition of the committee needs to be also viewed from the perspective of state representation, caste representation, and the balance of senior and junior — in terms of experience — party members.
Speaking on the relevance of apex decision-making bodies like the working committee in the Congress and the parliamentary board in the BJP, Kumar said, “(They are) relevant only to an extent of giving a sense that the party is working democratically. I am not sure how much democratic decision-making takes place in such meetings whenever BJP’s parliamentary board or Congress working committee meets.”
The political scientist further said: “Such committees are largely notional, though sometimes they do help in decision-making.”
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The ones who never contested
ThePrint looked at EC and Ashoka University Lok Dhaba data for the election history of all 84 CWC members and invitees to find that 22 of the 84 who are part of the CWC have never won either a general or assembly election. While 15 of these 22 never contested either an assembly or a general election, the other seven didn’t win any of those they contested.
Among those who have never contested a Lok Sabha or assembly election is Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who first entered the CWC in 2019, in her capacity as a general secretary in charge of Uttar Pradesh. She is a permanent member of the CWC.
Four other permanent members who never contested a Lok Sabha or assembly election include three sitting Rajya Sabha MPs — party general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh, chief whip Syed Naseer Hussain and MP Abhishek Manu Singhvi.
Ramesh and Singhvi have been intellectual assets to the party, with the former reportedly having been one of the main strategists credited with its return to power in the 2004 Lok Sabha election
Hussain, who is said to be close to Kharge, has risen in prominence within the Congress since the the latter’s election as party president last year, according to party sources.
The fourth is Deepak Babaria, in-charge of Haryana and Delhi, who is a permanent member and will hold the post even if he ceases to be an in-charge.
Others part of the CWC to have never contested a Lok Sabha or assembly election, include K. Raju, “a close Rahul Gandhi aide”, Dalit leader and permanent invitee to the CWC, and Pawan Khera, a special invitee who is chairman of the Congress’s media & publicity department.
Four of the fourteen Congress in-charges to various states and bodies, who are members of the CWC in that capacity, have also not fought any LS or assembly election.
Indian Youth Congress president Srinivas B.V., National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) president Neeraj Kundan, Mahila Congress chief Netta D’Souza and Congress Seva Dal president Lalji Desai, are part of the CWC by virtue of the posts they hold. None of the four have ever contested either a Lok Sabha or assembly poll.
Those who contested, but never won
This list includes former prime minister of India Manmohan Singh. He attempted to enter the Lok Sabha in 1999 from South Delhi but lost to the BJP’s Vijay Kumar Malhotra by 30,000 votes. He is a permanent member of the CWC.
Anand Sharma, mentioned above, is another example.
Then there is Supriya Shrinate a special invitee to the CWC and prominent Congress spokesperson who fought her debut election in 2019 from the Maharajganj Lok Sabha seat in UP, but lost to the BJP’s Pankaj Choudhary.
Similarly 36-year-old former Jawaharlal Nehru University student leader Kanhaiya Kumar made his electoral debut in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls on a Communist Party of India (CPI) ticket from Begusarai but lost to the BJP’s Giriraj Singh. He joined the Congress in 2021 and is a part of the CWC in his capacity as NSUI in-charge.
The other three in this category include Ambika Soni, a former minister in the Manmohan Singh government at the Centre and a close aide of the Gandhi family who contested the 2014 Lok Sabha election from Anandpur Sahib seat but lost to Shiromani Akali Dal candidate Prem Singh Chandumajra. She is a permanent member of the CWC.
Permanent CWC invitees B.K. Hariprasad and Girish Raya Chodankar made their poll debut during the 2019 Lok Sabha — Hariprasad from Bangalore (South) and Chodankar from North Goa, but lost to the BJP’s Tejasvi Surya and Shripad Yesso Naik, respectively.
Those whose solitary poll victory came while in another party
For five among the CWC’s members and invitees, their only Lok Sabha or assembly election victory came on another party ticket, and at the expense of the then Congress candidate in the fray.
Ajoy Kumar, AICC in-charge for the three north-eastern states of Sikkim, Tripura and Nagaland, won the Jamshedpur Lok Sabha seat in a 2011 by-election as a candidate of the Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (Prajatantrik) party. Banna Gupta, the Congress candidate in the fray, ended up in fifth place.
Kumar joined Congress only after the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and wasn’t fielded in 2019. He had left the party to join the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) for a year, before returning to the Congress in 2020.
Alka Lamba, associated with the Congress since her student days, joined AAP briefly between 2013 and 2019. The only election she won came on an AAP ticket in the 2015 Delhi assembly polls, with the Congress’s Parlad Singh Sawhney being among those she defeated.
Lamba went on to lose the 2020 polls in the national capital on a Congress ticket.
Similarly, Tariq Hameed Karra, a permanent invitee to the CWC, had won the 2014 Lok Sabha elections from Srinagar defeating former chief minister and then Congress ally Farooq Abdullah, on a People’s Democratic Party (PDP) ticket.
Mohan Prakash contested the Rajasthan assembly elections from four different parties in 1977, 1980 and 1990, but only won the 1985 election on a Lok Dal ticket. That was the only time he won a Lok Sabha or assembly election.
He has served as the Congress in-charge in states such as Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, but the party lost all the polls in states under his charge.
He is currently a party spokesperson and a permanent invitee to the CWC.
About a fourth of those part of CWC lost 2019 polls
Congress president Kharge leads the list of 24 CWC members and invitees who fought and lost the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
The last general election was the only blemish in Kharge’s otherwise outstanding electoral record. That defeat was the first after 11 assembly and Lok Sabha election victories between 1972 and 2014.
Kharge lost the 2019 Lok Sabha polls from Gulbarga (Karnataka). The seat was won by the BJP’s Umesh G. Jadhav.
Apart from Kharge, there are 23 others among the 84 CWC members and invitees who lost the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Of these, eight had also lost in the previous 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
Digvijaya Singh, Tariq Anwar, Ashok Chavan, Kumari Selja, Jagdish Thakor and Ghulam Ahmad Mir are some of the permanent members who lost in 2019
Permanent invitees and former chief ministers Veerappa Moily and Harish Rawat also lost the 2019 Lok Sabha polls — to BJP’s B.N. Bache Gowda in Karnataka’s Chikkaballapur and BJP’s Ajay Bhatt in Nainital-Udhamsingh Nagar, respectively.
Among other permanent invitees who lost the 2019 Lok Sabha elections are Deepender Singh Hooda, Girish Raya Chodankar and Chandrakant Handore.
Two state/Congress body in-charges who lost the last general elections include Manickrao Thakre and Kanhaiya Kumar. Among the special invitees, Supriya Shrinate and Vamshi Chand Reddy lost the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
Five CWC permanent members lost both the last two general elections in 2019 and 2014. This includes Meira Kumar, Ajay Maken, Jitendra Singh, Salman Khurshid and Deepa Das Munshi.
Permanent invitees Meenakshi Natarajan, Bhakta Charan Das and Pawan Kumar Bansal also lost both in 2014 and 2019.
The CWC isn’t only made up of those with patchy electoral records, however. Among its 84 members and invitees are 10 of the party’s 51 Lok Sabha MPs, who had managed to turn the tide of the BJP’s popularity in their respective constituencies, emerging victorious in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
These include Sonia and Rahul Gandhi, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, Shashi Tharoor, Gourav Gogoi, Pratibha Singh, Manish Tiwari, Kodikunnil Suresh, A. Chellakumar and Manickam Tagore.
(Edited by Poulomi Banerjee)
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