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Khushbu Sundar fifth Congress spokesperson to leave since March 2019
First to switch sides was Gandhi family loyalist Tom Vadakkan who joined the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in March 2019, accusing the Congress of questioning the integrity of the armed forces after the Balakot air strikes
Actor-turned-politician Khushbu Sundar is the fifth Congress spokesperson to have jumped ship or been sacked since Marc h 2019 ahead of the Lok Sabha elections last year.
First to switch sides was Gandhi family loyalist Tom Vadakkan who joined the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in March 2019, accusing the Congress of questioning the integrity of the armed forces after the Balakot air strikes.
Vadakkan, once considered close to Vincent George, a longtime aide of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, had been associated with the party’s media department for nearly 20 years, many of them under leaders such as Pranab Mukherjee and VN Gadgil.
In the recent organisational reshuffle in the BJP, Vadakkan was named as one of the party spokespersons. Vadakkan’s exit was followed by that of Priyanka Chaturvedi who quit the Congress to join the Shiv Sena in April 2019.
Chaturvedi, who was the convenor of the Congress media cell, was upset over the reinstatement of some Uttar Pradesh party workers who had misbehaved with her earlier during a press conference in Mathura. The Shiv Sena later nominated her to the Rajya Sabha.
Then, it was the turn of former Jharkhand Congress chief and spokesperson Ajoy Kumar who joined the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in September 2019 just before the assembly elections in the tribal-dominated state. He had complained about the functioning of the party’s Jharkhand leadership. However a year later, Kumar returned to the Congress fold this September.
Announcing his return to the Congress on Twitter, he said, “Silence becomes cowardice when occasion demands speaking out the whole truth & acting accordingly. – Mahatma Gandhi. Driven by my conscience to speak up against injustice & institutional capture, I’ve been inspired by Shri Rahul Gandhi & decided to come back to INCIndia today.”
But before Kumar’s return, the Congress in June this year removed Sanjay Jha as party spokesperson after he publicly criticised the party’s functioning and questioned the leadership. Jha had written an article in Times of India on June 7, saying it is a false claim that the Congress had an internal platform for frank exchange of ideas to get the party back on track.
“It is a false claim that there exists a robust internal democratic process that listens to individual voices, and more importantly, is continuously focused on party renewal, political strategy, tactical warfare, leadership development and resuscitation starting at the grassroots, the erstwhile USP of the Congress,” he wrote in the article.
And on Monday, Sundar became the fifth Congress spokesperson to leave. Soon after her joining the BJP, she told reporters that if the nation has to move forward, we need somebody like Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take the country in the right direction.
“My expectation from BJP isn’t about what party is going to do for me, but about what party is going to do for people of the country. When you have 128 crore people actually believing in one man and that’s our PM, I think they’re doing something absolutely right,” she added.
Earlier, in her resignation letter to the Congress president, Sundar wrote, “Few elements seated at higher levels within the party, people who have no connectivity with the ground reality or public recognition are dictating terms and people like me who wanted to work for the party sincerely, are being pushed and suppressed.”
The actor had earned the ire of Congress leaders from Tamil Nadu after she took a divergent stand on the issue of the National Education Policy (NEP). While the Congress had strongly opposed the policy, she welcomed it. Sundar later apologised to former Congress president Rahul Gandhi but insisted she would “rather speak the fact than be a head nodding robot or a puppet”.
A Congress functionary blamed the managers of the communications department for the exit of the spokespersons who are also faces of the party in the media.
“It is surprising to see that these spokespersons find it difficult to defend the leadership and hence prefer to jump ship. Our media managers have also failed in keeping their house in order,” he claimed.
