The Imminent Return Of Rahul

At the May 10 Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting, party president Sonia Gandhi announced that the Central Election Authority (CEA) of the Congress was ready with the schedule for the presidential election.

- Kaushik Deka

An earlier CWC meeting, on January 22, had set an end-June target to complete the process of electing the next party president. Accordingly, June 23 was fixed as the date for the election.

But given the ongoing Covid wave, all CWC members unanimously favoured a further deferral at the May 10 meeting. K.C. Venugopal, Congress general secretary (organisation), clarified that the deferral would not extend beyond two or three months. Surprisingly, the resolution to postpone the election was initiated by CWC members from among the ‘Group of 23’ that had in August 2020 written to Sonia Gandhi demanding an organisational overhaul and accountable leadership in the Congress.

While these leaders maintain that their sole objective was the party’s revival, their opponents and Gandhi family loyalists claim the letter was an indirect attack on Rahul Gandhi, who apparently did not consult the G23 leaders before taking key decisions that concern the party. Rahul, who is the Lok Sabha MP from Kerala’s Wayanad, remains the de facto leader and face of the Congress even two years after quitting as president following the party’s debacle in the 2019 Lok Sabha election.

The drubbing in the recent assembly polls has handed Rahul’s detractors another opportunity to question his leadership, for he had campaigned quite intensively in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Assam. Anticipating this, Sonia not only reiterated her commitment to hold the presidential election but also formed a five-member panel to explore the reasons for the party’s poor performance in the polls.

REVIVAL DREAMS