Congress leadership in a knot over change of guard in states

“You can be old at 40 and young at 80.” That was Capt. Amarinder Singh on Wednesday. A clear indication that he may have been deposed as chief minister of Punjab and his bete noire Navjot Singh Sidhu may have been made the chief of the state Congress unit and perhaps the party’s CM face in the coming Assembly polls, due in five months, but the former soldier, nearing 80, is not about to hang up his political boots.

For the Congress, that picture from Punjab of a defiant Amarinder Singh is also the big picture from other states across the country: the party’s young leaders are desperate to take on higher roles, but its veterans are in no mood to vacate space for them, leading to rebellions in state after state.

The change of guard in Punjab – the 79-year-old Amarinder Singh has been replaced by the 58-year-old Charanjit Singh Channi – sent a number of senior leaders in other states into a tizzy as the impression gained ground that the party high command is asserting itself and that Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, are keen to pass on the baton of leadership to the next generation (read Rajasthan) or to leaders whom they had promised power under the rotational arrangement (read Chhattisgarh) or to loyal seniors (read Haryana).

The ripple effect occurred in Haryana soon, with the party’s old warhorse Bhupinder Singh Hooda calling a meeting of the Congress Legislature Party on Wednesday at his residence, a show of strength apparently to make it clear that he is still the leader in the state and to ward off any bid to do a Punjab in Haryana. Twenty-five of the 31 Congress MLAs in the state were present at the meeting, leaving no one in doubt as to who calls the shots in Haryana party affairs.

The ties between Hooda and Haryana party chief Kumari Selja have strained in recent times. Selja, like Channi, is also a Dalit face, and a prominent one in Haryana.

The parallels do not end just there. Before the 2019 Assembly polls, Hooda had virtually forced the Congress leadership to declare him the CM face (he was made campaign committee chief) and had secured the resignation of Rahul Gandhi-appointed PCC chief Ashok Tanwar, a young Dalit leader, who had aggressively attempted to build the party since 2014.

Amarinder Singh had similarly forced the Congress to name him CM candidate in 2017, which the party leadership was not keen on and had avoided until towards the end of the poll campaign.

In Rajasthan, where a massive internal power tussle has been going on for the last three years between Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and Sachin Pilot (who was removed last year from the posts of PCC chief and Deputy CM), Gehlot did record the sidelining of Amarinder Singh.

“I hope that Capt Amarinder Singh ji won’t take any step that could cause damage to the party…I personally believe that the Congress president chooses the CM at the risk of inviting displeasure of several leaders…However, when the same CM is changed, he/she is displeased and holds the decision wrong,” Gehlot said.

Rajasthan BJP president Satish Poonia quipped that Gehlot is worried about his own chair. Taking a jibe at the internal strife in various Congress units, senior BJP leader Narendra Singh Tomar said, “The Congress is suffering from internal discord and the party leadership has become irrelevant now. Its effects are visible in Punjab and other states of the country.”

While in Rajasthan the Congress is yet to carry out the promised cabinet reshuffle to accommodate leaders close to Pilot and work out a satisfactory rehabilitation of Pilot himself and his loyalists despite multiple rounds of meetings held by the central leadership, in Chhattisgarh, which was one of the three states won by Congress in 2018 (along with Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan), the party is finding it hard to honour the promise apparently made by Rahul Gandhi to make party leader T S Singhdeo the CM, replacing incumbent Bhupesh Baghel, under a rotational arrangement, with Bhagel leaving no one in doubt he is not a pushover and will fight back.

In 2020, Congress lost its government due to an intense power tussle in Madhya Pradesh, which it had wrested from the BJP after 15 years. Congress lost not only the state but also Jyotiraditya Scindia who, up against veterans Kamal Nath and Digvijay Singh, quit the party, and took with him 22 MLAs to the BJP.

The development was a rude shock for Congress, which now wants to avoid such an eventuality in other states. Not giving leadership roles to its younger leaders could put at risk the future of the party in several states – as it learnt in Himachal Pradesh and Assam, where the party had chosen to remain under the shadow of veterans Virbhadra Singh and Tarun Gogoi.

Opposing the late Gogoi’s leadership in Assam, Himanta Biswa Sarma quit the party and joined BJP and is now Chief Minister of the state, heading the second BJP government there. He has helped BJP grow its footprint in the entire North-East region, marginalising Congress in state after state. Virbhadra Singh had in 2012 and 2017 forced Congress to declare him the CM face. Congress lost the 2017 polls. Singh, who had not allowed a strong second-rung leadership to grow, breathed his last in July this year.

What compounds the dilemma of the Congress is that the young leaders whom it promoted failed to cut ice. While some like Tanwar in Haryana and Arun Yadav as party chief in MP failed to enthuse voters and emerge as pan-state leaders, the more prominent ones like Scindia, Jitin Prasad (both of whom joined the BJP) Sidhu and Sachin Pilot wanted quicker recognition of their efforts and achievements at a time when the oldies controlling the power structures were/are not willing to make space.

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