Rajya Sabha not a 'last gift' of the Gandhis to loyalists

A possible explanation for the choice of Rajya Sabha candidates is that Sonia Gandhi could be relying on these loyalists to restructure the party

The trouble for the Congress Rajya Sabha candidates has begun surfacing in Rajasthan, Haryana and even Maharashtra. In Rajasthan, the Bharatiya Tribal Party has announced that its two legislators would be boycotting the Rajya Sabha polls. The Congress was relying on their support as well as of other independents. The vote of independents in Rajasthan might be easily drawn away by the 'independent' candidate supported by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Zee TV owner Subhash Chandra. In Haryana, too, the owner of another pro-government TV channel, News-X, Kartikeya Sharma, is contesting as an 'independent' with the BJP support. Both the Congress and BJP have also begun corralling their legislators in Rajasthan and Haryana to sequester their votes.

In Maharashtra, Congress state general secretary Ashish Deshmukh has resigned in protest against the candidates chosen by the party. In Karnataka, party spokesperson Brijesh Kalappa has also resigned presumably after not being chosen as the party candidate for the Rajya Sabha and is believed to be en route to the Aam Adami Party. Convinced that the party had nothing to offer him in his lifetime, veteran lawyer Kapil Sibal seems to have encashed his IOUs with the Samajwadi Party instead and is contesting with its support as an independent.

The BJP is in a position to accommodate a much larger number of aspirants than the Congress – as it has governments in four states, and along with alliances, it governs a total of 18 states. But in Congress, claimants vastly outnumber the availability of Rajya Sabha slots. Given its limited purse, it is too much to ask that Congress' distribution should have balanced castes, communities, gender, and age and also satisfy individual aspirations.

Some political commentators suggest that the Congress' choice of Rajya Sabha candidates reflects the rot within and its inability to implement the guidelines emerging from its recent 'Chintan Shivir' (Strategy Session) at Udaipur. The party's decision to field so many outsiders in the states going to the polls has been especially criticised. The nomination of Randeep Singh Surjewala, who lost two consecutive elections to the state legislature in Haryana in 2019 – from Jind and Kaithal -- from neighbouring Rajasthan, has led to quips like "Haryana se tadipar, Rajasthan se abki baar" (Externed from Haryana, elect him from Rajasthan). And why has Mukul Wasnik, a Maharashtra leader, not been fielded from his home state and instead moved to Rajasthan while Imran Pratapgarhi from Uttar Pradesh has been fielded in Maharashtra, where he has little purchase? The candidature of Ranjeet Ranjan, wife of Pappu Yadav, has also raised eyebrows.

Is it fair to conclude then that this is the last grand gift of the Gandhis to their loyalists before the party collapses? But talk to Congress insiders, and they claim that Rajeev Shukla qualifies not just on the strength of his closeness to the three Gandhis but also because of his ability to network across parties and draw corporates to the table when the party needs them most. Jairam Ramesh is part of the brains' trust of Congress. Ranjeet Ranjan, wife of Pappu Yadav, they claim, is a replacement for Sushmita Dev as an articulate woman leader in the Upper House. P Chidambaram, they say, had turned down an offer last year for a partial Rajya Sabha term from the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK). Given this, it is said that he could not have been denied a place on the one-family-one-ticket principle just because his son Karti Chidambaram is already a member of the Lok Sabha. Pramod Tiwari, too, has been a party loyalist through turbulent times when less patient leaders abandoned the party.

One might ask whether the Congress has chosen its candidates wisely when it seems at the outset that some of those fielded bring little more than their ambition to the table. Tiwari apparently expressed a desire to retire from politics altogether if he was not given a shot at the Rajya Sabha. The Congress party was probably aware that Tiwari, the third candidate in Rajasthan, its Haryana candidate Ajay Maken and Maharashtra candidate Imran Pratapgarhi, as outsiders, would not benefit from favourable headwinds. Moreover, it is inexplicable why Wasnik and Maken, who ought to be the party's Lok Sabha leading faces in their respective states two years later in 2024, have been nominated to the Rajya Sabha, taking them out of the Lok Sabha run later.

However, a possible explanation for the choice of candidates is that Congress President Sonia Gandhi could be relying on these loyalists to restructure the party before the election of its new party president three months from now. Five of the ten Rajya Sabha candidates are members of the party's Task Force for the 2024 General Election - P Chidambaram, Mukul Wasnik, Jairam Ramesh, Randeep Singh Surjewala and Ajay Maken - and Rajeev Shukla is in-charge of Himachal Pradesh which goes to polls later this year. All of them have proven their loyalty to the party, and presumably, the Congress president thinks that they have a crucial role in rebuilding the party's fortunes. All but Ajay Maken have been fielded from seats they are sure to win.

More than the peevishness of those left out, though, what matters now is how Sonia Gandhi uses the loyalists who are likely to be elected to the Upper House. She has little time to set the party's house in order and ensure that the party showcases its commitment to ensuring social justice, developing a plan for economic revival and employment generation, setting the wheels in motion for the proposed Bharat Jodo Yatra and winning the Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat elections.

(Bharat Bhushan is a journalist based in Delhi)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.