A dormant Congress is fuelling new opposition ambitions

If Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee clearly overshadowed the Gandhis as the ‘champion BJP slayer’ of the year, keeping the Sonia-Rahul-Priyanka trio edgy, 2022 could show how this ‘Mom-Bachchas controlled Congress’ vs ‘Didi’s own Congress’ will fan out through tactical tie-ups and impact the larger play involving the Congress and regional biggies on the anti-BJP turf.

Despite the BJP and NDA’s galloping dominance in the last two general elections, the ruling party’s ambitious ride has often stumbled at the state polls. 2021 showed that trend with the Trinamool, DMK, and LDF registering impressive victories in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala while the BJP+ could taste victory in Assam and Puducherry, mainly due to the Congress’ failure to fight and win.

The Modi-led BJP’s (post-2014 LS victory) ‘Congress Mukt Bharat’ electoral war-cry had meant a resolve to turn India saffron under a unified ideological command. Nearly eight years on, the BJP’s ‘Congress Mukt Bharat’ drive has confined the grand old party’s rule to just three states – Punjab, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh (excluding the Maharashtra and Jharkhand ruling coalitions in which the Congress is a junior partner). Yet, the BJP’s dream of wresting the entire country remains a mission unaccomplished mainly due to the resistance by regional powers.

As against the 12 BJP-led/dominated state governments (UP, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, Uttarakhand, Goa, Bihar and Haryana) there are another 12 states ruled by anti-BJP/NDA parties – of which, barring three of the Congress – the rest are led by regional parties, who fight the BJP and slice the Congress, such as the Trinamool in Bengal, AAP in Delhi, YSRCP in Telangana, BJD in Odisha, TRS in Telangana, DMK in Tamil Nadu, JMM-led government in Jharkhand and the Sena-NCP controlled Maharashtra. Courtesy its big brother allies in N-E and Puducherry, the BJP has its share in the government in another five (N-E) states and a UT.

It in this backdrop of increasingly combative fights in the states – BJP vs regional parties vs Congress – that 2022 will host key battles in UP, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Goa, Manipur, HP, Gujarat and possibly J&K-Ladakh – when the second Modi government gets deeper into its second half amid the Congress facing a turf challenge from opposition regional parties.

As the Congress remains a bit player in the BJP vs SP battle for UP, the GoP needs to retain Punjab and wrest Uttarakhand and Goa to safeguard its position on the opposition turf. Yet, the Congress is being challenged in these states as much by the BJP as by regional rivals; the Trinamool (in Goa), AAP (in Punjab, Goa, Uttarakhand) and Captain Amarinder Singh’s party (in Punjab). 2022 heralds a bigger task for the Congress – to simultaneously fight the BJP and resist the regional turf-poachers.

Caught between the devil and deep sea, the Congress leadership is accusing the Trinamool and AAP of trying to “divide” the opposition votes and helping the BJP but, the fact remains that the same Congress had jumped into opening a ‘third option’ in the Trinamool vs BJP fight in the Bengal polls and AAP vs BJP in the Delhi polls – just as the Priyanka Vadra-led UP Congress is trying it again vis a vis the SP vs BJP fight in UP. Electoral turf-poaching/expansion bids can’t be a one-way lane.

In realpolitik, you reap what you sow. The last two years have presented the Modi government its worst multiple crisis in the form of two Covid-19 waves (with a third wave threatening to hit in the New Year), the economic-unemployment-inflation crisis and the farmers’ agitation. Yet, the Gandhis, many leaders of the anti-BJP regional parties feel, failed to display leadership acumen to provide an inspiring and unifying leadership or narrative to the Congress, and by extension, for the larger opposition politics.

Instead, the Gandhis and the nominated CWC brass showcased the limit of their preoccupation (and perhaps ambition) to protect their own ’employment guarantees schemes’ in the leadership of a party in disarray. For one-and-a-half years now, the Congress leadership has refused to even address the fundamental functional reforms a group of party change-seekers had sought in their letter to Sonia Gandhi even as her son routinely questions PM Modi’s commitment to ‘democratic’ norms. For nearly two-and-half years now, the twice-beaten (and resigned) Congress challenger Rahul Gandhi takes all decisions in the GoP as a de facto party chief and still poses as one concerned about the ‘undermining’ of ‘institutional’ and ‘constitutional’ schemes (outside the Congress)!

Barring one structured reconciliation meeting (with the promised more such interactions never convened thereafter) between the representatives of the 23 Congress change-seekers and the AICC establishment on the lawns of 10 Janpath in December end, 2020, the Gandhis-led high command refused to have any serious engagement with the former, by partly taking advantage of the Covid-imposed numbness in politics and by unleashing a CWC loyalists’ ‘mob show’ at a meeting which the change-seekers sought to discuss the in-house rot.

Given that each of the organisational and leadership issues the party change-seekers raised in their letter were undisputable, many feel, the leadership rather thought that brazening them out was easier than debating them. The manner in which the AICC refused to condemn the evidently arranged ‘hooliganism’ in front of the residence of Kapil Sibal, after he spoke out and reminded the leadership of the party’s unaddressed drift, only exposed the leadership’s ‘cornered rat aggression’ syndrome. How long the Gandhis will continue to muffle internal questions or accommodate the issue, how the Congress will fare in the upcoming assembly polls, the fairness of the promised organisations polls, including to the Congress president’s and CWC posts, and how imaginatively Mamata Banerjee (and some others) throw wider “secular crossover” offers – all will impact the simmering rift within the Congress. Ghulam Nabi Azad’s pan J&K ground mobilisation is already keeping the political gallery closely watching.

The last half of 2021 also showcased Priyanka Vadra emerging as the only AICC general secretary with powers to interfere with the party affairs beyond her designated state (UP), be it in Punjab, Rajasthan or Uttarakhand (the list may increase in 2022). The passing year also witnessed Sonia Gandhi springing a unique (critics say ‘brazen’) act, by declaring herself overnight as “a full-time and hands-on Congress president” after having been made an “interim Congress president” by the CWC in August 2019. The main nagging New Year’s worry for the Gandhi family loyalists appears to be whether a third Covid wave will spoil the plan for Rahul’s return as party chief by August.

It is this ‘Vikram Aur Betal’-like, ‘Gandhis-Vadra Aur CWC’ arrangement amid the unprecedented decline of the Congress that is emboldening successful regional parties’ leaders to challenge the Congress and Gandhis’ right to be the anti-BJP pivot. Though the Congress counters it with the theoretical argument that the party “directly fights the BJP” in about 250 LS seats, and therefore, no anti-BJP mobilisation can be possible without the GoP, the practical reality of the 2019 LS polls showed Congress winning just six seats of the 250 ‘direct fights against BJP’ (1/80 in UP, 1/40 in Bihar, 1/28 of MP, 0/26 in Gujarat, 0/25 in Rajasthan, 1/14 in Jharkhand, 2/11 in Chhattisgarh, 0/10 in Haryana and 0/7 in Delhi, 0/5 in Uttarakhand and 0/4 in HP). Congress did worse in 2014.

This spectacle of the Congress providing electoral fodder for the BJP march is emboldening many successful and ambitious leaders of regional parties – with Banerjee in the forefront and some others, including a few Congress allies, tactically assessing the timing to assert themselves. They feel that in order to make the fight against BJP more effective, a confederation of anti-BJP regional parties, with potential to rope in more, should jointly take up the lead against the BJP and NDA by making the failing-to-revive/learn Congress play the supporting role.

If the seed of this tactical thinking and ambition was sowed in 2021, the political and electoral events of 2022 will show how the Congress and its ambitious turf-challengers will cope with this growing plot within the opposition, and its in-built conflicts, as their occupational hazard to refresh the strategies to fight the BJP and the Modi government – by projecting a credible, unifying alternative leadership face and agenda – gains urgency in the countdown to the 2024 battle.