Rahul Gandhi’s core team has moved out as calls for return grow

The people nurtured and mentored by the 50-year-old as part of his core team have either quit the party or their positions since he resigned as president in May 2019, owning responsibility for the Congress ‘s general election debacle.

If Rahul Gandhi heeds the call of some of his party people and returns as Congress president, relieving his mother Sonia of the responsibility of leading the 135-year-old party, the first problem he will confront is on the human resources front.

The suggestion is that the team picked by Gandhi was sidelined by the old guard within the Congress party. (PTI)

The people nurtured and mentored by the 50-year-old as part of his core team have either quit the party or their positions since he resigned as president in May 2019, owning responsibility for the Congress ‘s general election debacle. State unit chiefs such as Ashok Tanwar in Haryana, Pradyot Deb Barman in Tripura and Ajoy Kumar in Jharkhand, have all left the Congress Party.

Ajay Maken who was appointed Delhi chief in 2015, quit before the 2019 polls.

Senior leader Jyotiraditya Scindia switched to the Bhartiya Janata Party in March after a longstanding rift with former Madhya Pradesh colleagues, Kamal Nath and Digvijay Singh and the party central leadership’s hands-off approach to the crisis in Madhya Pradesh.

And both of Rahul Gandhi’s appointees as Mumbai Congress chiefs, Sanjay Nirupam and Milind Deora, have stepped down from their posts. Rumours about them exiting the party refuse to die down, despite their own denials.

So why did so many key team members leave in the 13 months since Rahul Gandhi called it quits?

Nirupam answered with a question: ”Is it a coincidence that this is so or is there something of a bigger plan or strategy behind it?’’

The suggestion is that the team picked by Gandhi was sidelined by the old guard within the Congress party. In the ever-raging battle of the generations, his appointees stopped finding the support they needed to function in the party’s Delhi headquarters, one argument goes.

“Those who are entrenched in the system help each other,’’ said Tanwar, who was picked as the Haryana Congress chief in 2019 and then quit the party in October last year ahead of the Haryana elections. “Rahul is a well-intentioned man who tried to build a new leadership and bring in new reforms and initiatives but once he left, there was no one who would listen to us.’’

To be sure, none of those who left blame Gandhi “I think he is still the bravest and nicest guy to work for,’’ said former Indian Police Service (IPS) officer turned politician Ajoy Kumar, who quit as Jharkhand Congress head soon after Gandhi quit. He has now joined the Aam Aadmi Party. `After he resigned the protection needed to keep some not very nice people at bay disappeared. If he were there maybe they would not have succeeded in their designs.’’

Pradyot Deb Barman ,who was the Congress’ Tripura chief, said he had quit because of it a total lack of direction. “There was no consistency in our policies. The old guard wasn’t supportive at all,’’ he said, adding, `”How could the Congress have a different view on the Citizenship Amendment Act in Assam and a different one in Tripura?’’ The Congress backed the NRC in Assam because of the original Assam accord but not in Tripura or other parts of the country.

But there are others cosely associated with Gandhi who remain in the party -- for instance, the deputy chief minister of Rajasthan, Sachin Pilot , and new Rajya Sabha MP Rajeev Satav. Pilot, who declined comment for this story, has managed to build his own base within the party in Rajasthan. And Satav rejects the theory that Gandhi built an all-new, all young team. ``If you really look, you will find that Rahul Gandhi got along really well with Captain Amarinder Singh and with former Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah (neither of whom is really nxt-generation). So he pushed anyone who had the capacity to perform. He pushed 100 people and 10 may have left, but 90 are still there.’’

Zoya Hasan, who taught at JNU and authored a book on the Congress says there is a larger problem with the party. “I can’t comment on who is leaving or not leaving. That’s been going on for a long time. The basic problem is that Congress doesn’t have a full time president for more than a year which should be unacceptable at any time but more so when the ruling party has a strong leader and the leading opposition party has none. It’s odd for a party to have an interim president (Sonia Gandhi) and defacto president (Rahul Gandhi) but no full time president. No political party can function without a full time president.“