Ahmed Patel was master conductor of the orchestra called Congress

The untimely demise of veteran Congress leader and Rajya Sabha member Ahmed Patel on November 25, due to post-COVID-19 complications, is a body blow for the Congress and has deprived the Gandhis of the one rock they could cling on to amidst the storm raging within the party.

By winning the Bharuch Lok Sabha seat during the Janata Party rule in 1977, Patel marked the rise of a young star within the Congress. He retained the Bharuch seat till 1989 and thereafter moved to the upper house, for five long terms. What made him a centre of power was his considered decision not to wield it openly. Instead, by keeping away from Cabinet postings in the Manmohan Singh-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalitions that he helped forge, and as Sonia Gandhi’s political secretary for 16 years, Patel chose to be the kingmaker.

After Sharad Pawar, PA Sangma and Tariq Anwar broke ranks with Congress in 1999 over the nativity issue of Sonia Gandhi, Patel took on the mantle of their go-between with the Gandhis, thus keeping the NCP within the UPA fold. It was pretty much the same formula he followed with Mamata Banerjee and the Trinamool Congress. He tried to replicate the same formula in 2004, when K Karunakaran decided to part ways with the Congress by keeping the Kerala leader’s son K Muraleedharan as a loyalist. Though the ploy did not have a long lease of life leading to the infamous 'Aluminium Patel' war, neither did Karunakaran’s dalliance away from the Congress as his son had to eat crow and bow before the wiles of Patel.

Sure, quelling dissidence was his forte. However, with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi pulling in one direction and then in another, and ultimately ending up much of the time in the vacillating in-between space, Patel was clearly struggling to keep under control the growing defiance by the ‘Group of 23’.

He was distraught about the likes of Kapil Sibal washing dirty linen in public and kept pushing for a direct dialogue with the Gandhis. However, the emerging power structure within the crumbling Congress edifice was rendering his efforts ineffectual. Adding to the degree of difficulty, the carrot and stick policy he wielded with considerable success over the years was not proving fruitful, primarily as the party coffers began emptying even as many leaders continued to stay disconnected with the grassroots. That has been one charge against Patel himself — one which he went all out to disprove by almost clinching the Gujarat assembly in 2017.

In Patel’s demise Sonia Gandhi has lost a party stalwart she banked on to stem the slide of the grand old party from within just as many others are threatening to do it from outside. Mindful of his ability to turn things around during the most difficult of circumstances, the BJP went all out to keep him out of the Rajya Sabha, with Patel fighting tooth and nail and succeeding in retaining his seat in 2018. Understatement was his calling card, finesse his style and the ability for quick parry and thrust his prowess in the political battlefield.

For the Congress, the passing away of Patel reinforces the adage 'when it rains, it pours’. A few days back the party lost Tarun Gogoi, he too to post-COVID-19 related complications, who was a regional satrap and party old-timer. As the party re-engineering that has been going on for quite some time on the Rahul Gandhi front continues with no end in sight, the absence of veterans will hurt the party—this is especially true in Patel’s case.

If the Congress was the Los Angeles Philharmonic, then Ahmed Patel was the Zubin Mehta. It’s another matter that his detractors saw him more as consigliere than conductor. There are not too many of his ilk left, at least not in the Congress. His absence will leave a deep void for the Gandhis as the shelf keeps emptying fast.

Vinod Mathew is a senior journalist. Views are personal.