It seems problems for Indian National Congress are far from over. The Party which is already mired by a consecutive dribbling in Loksabha Elections and an ever decreasing support base across the nation is now fighting an inconvenient battle of Leadership change.
Rahul Gandhi resigned from Congress president post and since then Sonia Gandhi assumed the position of interim Congress President. Recently top-26 Congress leaders shot a letter to Gandhi family to consider appointing a full-time and visible leadership at the top. As expected, Gandhi family didn’t take this letter in the right spirit and their coteries have already started slamming this letter, as this was questioning the ability of Gandhi Family, specifically Rahul Gandhi.
In today’s meeting, Rahul Gandhi intervened sharply and accused the leaders of collaborating with the BJP. Upon receiving this sharp criticism from Rahul Gandhi, two of the top Congress leaders, Kapil Sibal and Ghulam Nabi Azad didn’t leave this opportunity to show their unhappiness and offered to resign if there an iota of any evidence of their relationship with BJP.
It is said that Kapil Sibal, who is an old leader and usually defends Congress in its legal fights in courtrooms, tweeted this message while sitting in the Party meeting. If language is any indicator, then it is clearly visible that Sibal was miffed with the kind of treatment given by Rahul Gandhi.
However, Kapil Sibal was quick enough to take a U-Turn and retracted from his earlier statement.
Another Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad also offered to resign, as Rahul Gandhi is raising a question over his loyalty towards the Party and its leadership. However we know he will be retracting from his statement, may in the next few minutes or hours.
Here it’s quite visible that Congress Leadership (Gandhi Family) is quite uncomfortable with any sort of questions raised and they want to assume the leadership without any dispute and dissent. In recent times, many Congress leaders who tried to raise valid questions over the Leadership, have been sidelined or suspended from the party. Party leaders like Sanjay Jha, Milind Deora, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Sanjay Nirupam, Sanjay Dixit are few such leaders, who paid the heavy price for showing their dissent with the Gandhi Family.
Now the question here, is Congress heading for a split, or is it another drama enacted by the Gandhi family to sideline those leaders who do not have faith and loyalty towards the Gandhi heirs.
We are in the opinion that Gandhi Family has decided to keep the leadership with them, come what may. They will keep kicking out anyone who questions them, but they are forgetting that such removal of leadership will hamper the prospects of Congress party in the long run, which is already in shambles in several states. Congress supporters are already in the demoralized state and such acts will only diminish their faith in the party and leadership further.
