The high command culture is making a noisy comeback in the Congress. The icing on the cake is that the Gandhi trio is not representing the political authority and virtually nobody is complaining.
For the second time in less than two months, KC Venugopal, AICC general secretary in charge of the party organisation, released a second letter saying the Congress president has approved the appointment of TS Singhdeo as Chhattisgarh deputy chief minister. Last month, Venugopal had gone public with a missive naming the ministers for Karnataka council of ministers when the tussle between Siddaramaiah and DK Shivakumar had reached to a flash point.
Eyebrows were raised as to why Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge was directing the chief minister when it was Siddaramaiah and Bhupesh Baghel’s discretion to appoint their deputies and ministers. But in both cases, the deputy and their superior had little functional ties or trust.
The big question now doing the rounds is whether Kharge would muster enough courage to tame Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot to accept Sachin Pilot either as state party chief or the deputy chief minister? Would Pilot be named as Rajasthan campaign Committee chief?
Party sources insist that the Rajasthan impasse is set to be resolved. It implies that a letter, third in the series of establishing the Congress high command’s supremacy is readied by Venugopal. July 3, 2023 is slated to be a crucial date when a brainstorming on Rajasthan’s electoral strategy is planned. But there has been a twist in the tale. Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot has apparently injured his toe and advised six days’ rest. The news of Gehlot’s reported injury may have brought Kharge’s attention towards author John Green quote, “It’s hard to believe in coincidence, but it’s even harder to believe in anything else.”
Sources close to Kharge have reasons to be sceptical not so much about chief minister’s toe injury but the quirk part of illness/injury, etc, coming at times whenever Gehlot is summoned by the Delhi durbar. A combination of hunch, theorising, guessing, surmising counts three instances of Covid-related issues, twice fever and now toe-injury preventing Gehlot’s presence in Delhi when he himself wanted to respond to the call of the high command. Call it insensitive, wicked, deprave, immoral, etc, but sympathy for illness is increasingly turning into a short supply. Would the Congress high command shift the meeting to the Rajasthan capital so that the urgency of Jaipur brainstorming is maintained or wait for six more days?
In any case, in the Congress assessment, Gehlot is not made of the same cloth as of Baghel or Siddaramaiah. The quintessential politician is known to checkmate the leadership and events of September 25, 2022, bear a testimony of it when Gehlot defied Sonia Gandhi. Kharge was present in Jaipur that night. His rhetoric of not letting Pilot have a substantial say in Jaipur now faces the Kharge test. Pilot’s demand for setting up a panel against the previous Vasundhara Raje regime and probe against paper-leaks, etc, have been stonewalled by Gehlot in spite of gentle nudging from Venugopal.
Kharge has to prove to Gehlot and the rest of the party who the real boss is. With the Gandhis watching from a distance, the Rajasthan power struggle is set for a climax with a clear winner and loser.
The writer is a visiting fellow at the Observer Research Foundation. A well-known political analyst, he has written several books, including ‘24 Akbar Road’ and ‘Sonia: A Biography’. Views expressed are personal.
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