Senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh’s remark that the party missed an opportunity to align with Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) in the 2025 Bihar elections has sparked an internal controversy, with both Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi and general secretary KC Venugopal saying Kumar was never interested in a pact with the Congress.
Singh claimed he did a SWOT (strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that indicated the ruling dispensation is on the backfoot.
He, however, said the BJP managed to align with the JD(U) in the past and the Congress failed to retain its alliance with both the RJD and the JD(U).
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The CWC members said Gandhi later narrated how he objected to the selection of candidates in front of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Referring to a meeting to select a constitutional functionary, Gandhi said he reminded Modi that the latter was going ahead with the selection despite objections.
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{{/usCountry}}“Modi said he was not doing anything new. The late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi also did the same. I told him, she lost an election (1977), to which Modi told me, ‘when we go, you will come’,” Gandhi told the CWC, according to three members of the committee.
Congress communication chief Jairam Ramesh, however, told HT, “I don’t know where such stories come from.”
Senior MP Abhishek Singhvi said the government has faced three big crises – protests over the three farm laws, students’ protests over exam paper leaks and the current controversy over the chief election commissioner.
“This time, the BJP is on the backfoot,” he said. He (Gandhi) suggested that the party maintain a track II (unofficial interaction) with students and mobilise them as they forced education minister Dharmendra Pradhan to resign earlier this year.
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Singhvi also advised the party to press ahead wholeheartedly with the impeachment notice against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.
Party leader K Raju suggested the party should reach out to all those disenfranchised in the SIR.
This came ahead of the INDIA bloc meeting on Wednesday, where opposition parties are likely to finalise an action plan for a joint agitation over alleged irregularities in the SIR exercise, including a notice for a fresh bid to move a motion in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha for the removal of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Kumar.