In December 2018, Congress had won elections in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh (where it later lost majority). At that time, it was faced with factional tussle in all three states, particularly Rajasthan. The party, then headed by Rahul Gandhi, went for the more experienced leader, Ashok Gehlot as the chief minister and young state unit chief, Sachin Pilot, as his deputy (now out of both the posts).
This Rajasthan ‘template’, a reference some party leaders use, came to a full circle in Bengaluru on Saturday. Senior party leader Siddaramaiah took over as Karnataka chief minister whereas younger state unit chief, D K Shivakumar, took oath as his deputy. As the euphoria of the Karnataka win settles down, all eyes are now on states where Congress is faced with factional troubles.
Nearly 2,000 kilometres away in Jaipur, Congress is faced with mounting pressure from dissident leader Sachin Pilot who recently threatened to launch a massive movement in Rajasthan if action on his demands is not taken by May-end.
While not as loud as Rajasthan, rumblings of disgruntlement have been felt in Chhattisgarh. State minister T S Singh Deo, has in the past, voiced concerns about the running of the government under Chief Minister Bhupesh Singh Baghel. The factional issues are not limited to party-ruled states alone. In Telangana, for instance, a section of the senior leadership has expressed disapproval of state unit chief and young leader Revanth Reddy.
Party leaders and political experts say that Congress will have to address issues of factional tussle in the key poll-bound states, particularly Rajasthan. Ahead of the three key assembly elections this year (Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh) and the Lok Sabha polls early next year, Congress central leadership could look to prioritise settling internal factional disputes in some of its state units.
In all the three states, Congress is in a direct contest with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is incumbent in Madhya Pradesh.
In Rajasthan, the fight between the two factions of Congress party, has been out in the open for a while with leaders voicing their discontentment publicly. On Thursday, supporters of Gehlot and Pilot got into a physical scuffle with each other ahead of a feedback meeting with the party workers in Ajmer. With less than six months left for elections, party leaders are worried about such optics hurting its prospects.
“"The fight between the two sides is at its peak and the state unit is clearly divided into two parts. The leadership needs to come up with some resolution. Otherwise, it will affect the party’s chances in the upcoming elections,” a senior party leader from Rajasthan said requesting anonymity.
This leader said that central to this tussle is the upcoming ticket distribution for assembly elections this year. Both the factions want their close associates and supporters to get more tickets to increase their leverage in the state unit, the leader quoted above, added.
Earlier this week, Pilot launched a 125-kilometre foot yatra from Ajmer to Jaipur to highlight some of the issues that he has been raising. According to a news report by Press Trust of India, his demand among others, includes a high-level probe into charges of corruption which he has levelled against the previous BJP government. Officially, the party has maintained that it will review the issues raised by Pilot.
“The dynamics of each state is different from another. But given how the local leaders helped chart a win in Karnataka, there is a sense that the central leadership may take some action soon to address the factional troubles in Rajasthan,” another party leader in the know of developments, added.
In the other poll-bound state, Chhattisgarh, more recently there has been no significant public show of discontent. In fact, last week, both Baghel and Deo attended a meeting taken by the party’s general secretary in-charge Kumari Selja. Briefing reporters later, Deo said that the meeting was to discuss organisational preparations and plans for the state election campaign.
The situation in both the states also differ because while the Gehlot-led government in Rajasthan has a slim majority, Baghel enjoys support of Congress MLAs who form two-thirds of the legislative assembly in Chhattisgarh.
“This is not the first time that Congress is dealing with internal leadership crisis. As long as its ‘high command’ was powerful and took firm decisions, state leaders could not oppose it. But in the past two decades, state leaders have asserted themselves because of a weakening central leadership,” Sanjay Lodha, Rajasthan coordinator of the Lokniti network of New Delhi-based Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, told Moneycontrol. “This issue gets particularly pronounced in states where Congress is in a direct contest with another party,” he added.
Lodha, who is also a retired political science professor and advisor at Jaipur-based Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Governance and Social Sciences, added that while it was ‘easy to say that the issue should be resolved before election’, the party will fear that declaring one name as opposed to another could further spoil its chances.
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