Jyotiraditya Scindia's exit on Madhavrao Scindia's birth anniversary exposes rift within Congress

On the 75th birth anniversary of his father Madhavrao Scindia, Jyotiraditya Scindia, a quintessential Congressman walked out of Congress, ending his nearly 19-year-long association with the party; an event which will go down in the political history of Hindi belt as a watershed moment.

When Scindia, one of the most promising politicians from the Congress stable who was until some time ago a close associate of Rahul Gandhi, quit the party after being sufficiently sidelined by the party veterans in his home state, it was reflective of the mire that the Congress finds itself in and was a pattern that has been ailing the Congress for decades in many states.

Follow live developments on the Madhya Pradesh government crisis

Almost sounding the warning signal, Vikramaditya Singh, son of veteran Congress leader from Jammu and Kashmir tweeted: “Congress has lost one of its tallest and dynamic youth leaders. It is sad, that a dedicated and impactful leader like him was sidelined rather than being rewarded for his immense contribution. Party will have to pay a heavy price.”

Exposing that it was an internal rivalry that forced Scindia to quit, Singh further said, “it is unfortunate that Scindia has been pushed to the corner by his own leaders with damaging results for the Congress party. This is a huge blow to the party that will have strong ripple effects down to the grassroots level.”

Scindia’s exit will further compound the already messy generation divide within the party, where the old guards are not ready to take a backseat even after Rahul Gandhi volunteered to resign, owning moral responsibility for the 2019 Lok Sabha poll defeat, expecting that the seniors will also follow suit.

The loss of Scindia at this juncture for Congress means loss of Madhya Pradesh, a state it won only last year after a 15-year-exile from power and the primary reasons for this exile was bitter factional fight within the party, which resurfaced again and is all set to consume the Kamal Nath government within one and a half year of coming to power.

In the neighbouring Rajasthan, there is a bitter power tussle between Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and Deputy CM Sachin Pilot. In Maharashtra, young Congress leader Milind Deora is also sulking.

What is ironical in Madhya Pradesh development is that one of the triumvirate of Congress politics in the state Congress--former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijaya Singh had been making a strong pitch for quite some time for bringing back leaders who left Congress in last few years and even decades, to revive the seemingly dying Congress.

But in his own state, the party has faltered owing to factional fight in which he himself and Kamalnath are seen as one pole now.

Barring former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy, who re-joined Congress in July 2018, after having quit in 2014 in opposition to the creation of Telangana, no other major leader has re-joined the Congress.

In Chhattisgarh, Congress could end its exile from power in 2018 only after it got rid of its first Chief Minister in the state Ajit Jogi, who in 2016 formed a new political party, Chhattisgarh Janata Congress.

At least five former Chief Ministers and half a dozen former Union Ministers of Congress have quit the party since 2014. Most of these leaders had strong community appeal and have helped the BJP reach out to new voters’ constituencies. Clearly the BJP is a default beneficiary of Congress not being able to keep its pack together. The desertions have hit the Congress from North to South, East to West.

When Congress’ well-known media face and its spokesperson Tom Vadakkan, quit the party and joined the BJP in March 2019 after serving the party for 20 years, many wondered who next after this known Christian face from Kerala, who was believed to be close to Sonia Gandhi. It also underlines the crisis of commitment in Congress.

In past, leaders like former Karnataka chief minister and former External Affairs Minister S M Krishna, a prominent Vokkaligga community leader, former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister ND Tiwari, Vijay Bahuguna, and former Union minister Jayanti Natarajan had also quit the party. Krishna and Bahuguna later joined the BJP.

Bahuguna had quit Congress in January 2014 and joined BJP with eight other Congress rebel MLAs after a bitter spat with the then Chief Minister Harish Rawat.

In January 2015, Natarajan had quit after making public a letter she had written to the then Congress president Sonia Gandhi in November detailing reasons for her “unhappiness and disillusionment about the party’s functioning.”

Even in the Northeast, Congress could not keep its flock together and lost its chief strategist Himanta Biswa Sarma to BJP in 2015 owing to tussle with the then Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi. Later, the BJP formed a government in Assam in 2016, opening its account in the Northeast.

Five-time Chief Minister of Meghalaya Donwa Dethwelson Lapang resigned from the party in September 2018, accusing the leadership of adopting a policy of "phasing out" senior leaders.

Soon after 2014 Lok Sabha polls, senior Congress leader from Haryana Chaudhary Birender Singh, a prominent Jat leader and a former AICC general secretary, joined the BJP and became Union Minister in Modi’s first tenure.

Former Union Minister from Andhra Pradesh D Purandeswari also joined the BJP in the same period.

Senior Congress leader Narayan Rane resigned from the party in 2017 blasting Congress for the "injustice" it had done to him and his supporters and later joined the BJP in 2019.