"Just as the Congress demands that the Constitution of India not be decimated by the BJP, we in the Congress want our party constitution to prevail. That's all," said a somber Kapil Sibal, noted senior lawyer and former union minister, speaking to me exclusively for NDTV.com. Sibal is one of the 23 signatories of the "letter bomb" that questioned the Gandhis' current style of leadership. The dissenters have been careful to stress that what they want is elections for key posts including a full-time President. After the note went public (NDTV.com got exclusive access to the entire letter yesterday, you can read it here) and took centre space at the recent Congress Working Committee, party president Sonia Gandhi issued a comment which amounted to no hard feelings. The dissenters said they felt they had been heard.
Five days later, hot mess.
The party has descended into an uncivil war, as I had predicted in my NDTV column after the Working Committee meeting. The dissenters then had told me they feared vendetta and being put on "lists". The knives are out, just as they feared.
After being excoriated by others at the meeting, they have been pointedly excluded from a list of big promotions accorded yesterday by Sonia Gandhi for positions in parliament. Shashi Tharoor, Anand Sharma and Manish Tewari are among the leaders whose signing of the letter has apparently cost them big. Instead, Gandhi loyalists, especially those who are Rahul Gandhi fanboys, have got a big leg up.
Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi (file photo)
Gaurav Gogoi and Ravneet Singh Bittu (incidentally, both dynasts) were appointed deputy leader and whip in the Lok Sabha. Jairam Ramesh, a senior leader who was not in the dissenters' group has been appointed Chief Whip of the Congress.
A committee comprising of treasurer Ahmed Patel, paramount Sonia Gandhi vision-enforcer and K C Venugopal, who performs the same function for Rahul Gandhi, has been formed to keep In check those signatories like Ghulam Nabi Azad, leader of the party in the Rajya Sabha, and Anand Sharma.
Ghulam Nabi Azad has been most vocal in his call for an overhaul of the Congress. His Rajya Sabha term expires in February and it is fairly obvious that he won't be be allowed another. In an apparent go-big-or-go-home approach, he said today to news agency ANI that "The Congress will continue to sit in the opposition for the next 50 years if elections don't happen in the party". This is his sharpest attack yet on the Gandhi family leadership.
I spoke to most of the 23 dissenters. The big point they want to make is this - "What is dissent? Those who ask for the implementation of the Congress manifesto? We want to fight the BJP but the Congress has currently ensured that we only fight for the Gandhi family. We have lost political credibility by being satellites of a family".
Ghulam Nabi Azad (file photo)
The other point they make is that the Gandhi family is not the Congress party. "We need to fight for democracy, not the Gandhi family," a senior leader told me. They cite the enormous number of cases the Gandhi family is embroiled in. "We know most of it is vendetta by Modi and Shah but we are constantly fighting for the Gandhi family and the extended family of Vadra (Priyanka Gandhi's spouse Robert Vadra).
Yesterday, the Uttar Pradesh Committee of the Congress asked for the expulsion of Jitin Prasada. He was called a traitor just like his father (Jitendra Prasada contested against Sonia Gandhi for the president's post). One office-bearer is allegedly on video saying he was asked to draft the expulsion resolution from "the top" of the party.
Sibal tweeted yesterday "Unfortunate that Jitin Prasada is being officially targeted in UP. The Congress needs to target BJP with surgical strikes instead of wasting its energy targeting its own". In Maharashtra, the dissenters including Milind Deora and Prithviraj Chavan have been publicly warned by a Congress unit that they will not be allowed to move freely if they don't apologise for the dissent letter. I asked Deora for comments. He said he does not want to join any fight. "As far as I was made aware by its authors the letter was a private document and never about demanding a leadership change. Its aim was only to introspect and bring constructive changes within the party and was not meant to be placed in the public domain". This is the first time that Deora has gone on record for his views on the "letter bomb".
The dissenters are clear they will not give up. They are also aware that the Gandhi family and its managers will not go beyond cosmetic reforms and seek only for Rahul Gandhi to take over and remake the Congress in his own image. The 23 may well find they are in a lonely league of their own, one that could steadily shrink.
(Swati Chaturvedi is an author and a journalist who has worked with The Indian Express, The Statesman and The Hindustan Times.)
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