Royal Gandhi Family Won’t Vacate Congress Throne Easily
If the Gandhi family is not removed from Congress, the traditional party will soon die and the Indian democracy will be crushed under Modi’s diktats.
By Rakesh Raman
The way things stand today, it appears that the Gandhi family will have to be forcibly thrown out of the Congress to save the dying political outfit. After dilly dallying the issue of presidential election in the party during the past couple of years, the ailing interim president Sonia Gandhi has once again deferred the election which was scheduled to take place in June.
After the party’s drubbing in the 2019 Lok Sabha election that Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won, many thought that Congress will allow some intelligent leaders to control the political affairs. But it did not happen, although the then Congress president Rahul Gandhi – who is Sonia Gandhi’s own son – quit ostensibly.
But during the past 2 years, Rahul Gandhi has been working as a de facto party chief and did not allow the election to take place. Now, the election was expected because Congress continued with its losing streak in the April-May state elections in Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, and Bengal.
During the Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting today (May 10), Sonia Gandhi casually acknowledged the need to introspect into the party’s repeated setbacks in the assembly elections but did not take any corrective steps. Rather, the CWC – which is full of Congress puppets – deferred the election for Congress president under the excuse of coronavirus (Covid-19). Usually dogs are supposed to be loyal to their masters. But in India’s opposition party Congress, most incompetent politicians are loyal to their masters in the Gandhi family.
In fact, the election is being delayed repeatedly because Sonia Gandhi wants her son to be the president without holding the election. Last year, according to an NDTV report, nine former Uttar Pradesh (UP) Congress leaders had written a letter to Sonia Gandhi, asking her to “rise above the affinity for the family (parivaar ke moh)” and lead the party by establishing mutual trust and restoring constitutional and democratic values within the party.
Also, after a dissent letter sent to Sonia Gandhi by over 20 rebel Congress leaders in August last year, more voices of internal opposition to the Gandhi family have been emerging. The UP dissidents included former Congress MP Santosh Singh and former minister Satyadev Tripathi. Their letter came on the heels of the earlier letter signed by top Congress leaders including Shashi Tharoor, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Prithviraj Chavan, Anand Sharma, and Kapil Sibal.
The restlessness among Congress leaders is increasing, as the Nehru-Gandhi family – including Sonia Gandhi, her son Rahul Gandhi and daughter Priyanka Gandhi – refuse to give up control of the party which is facing extinction.
The dissidents have questioned the lethargic working style of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi and demanded an elected leadership which is active and visible on the ground to raise people’s concerns. They have cautioned that the uncertainty over the leadership issue within the party is demoralizing the party workers and weakening the party.
As the Gandhi family members are running the party as a family fiefdom, they have completely failed to challenge the might of PM Modi, who is running the country in a freewheeling manner.
While Sonia Gandhi does not have any experience to run different departments of the party, Rahul Gandhi is so naive and incompetent that he keeps tweeting raw text lifted from newspaper reports to criticize Modi. Using the coronavirus excuse, they refuse to occupy the streets to fight for people’s rights.
However, despite coronavirus today most public protests against the autocratic rulers in countries such as Russia, Thailand, Israel, Belarus, and the U.S. are taking place in the streets. But Sonia and Rahul Gandhi keep sitting in the comforts of their homes without posing any challenge to the despotic Modi regime.
The Gandhi family and its clique could never offer any solution to tackle the growing problems in India under Modi’s dictatorial rule. Today, India is facing an unprecedented scale of socio-economic crisis with rampant corruption, extreme lawlessness, unemployment, poverty, hunger, and economic devastation under the Modi government.
Instead of addressing these issues head-on, Sonia and Rahul Gandhi are only repeating in their tweets or irrelevant video messages what everyone already knows about Modi’s failures. They could never tell how Congress would challenge the Modi government to overcome these problems.
The incompetence of Congress top brass will also harm the party in the crucial upcoming elections in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh. In Punjab, for example, a senior Congress leader Navjot Singh Sidhu has staged a revolt against his colleague and Punjab chief minister (CM) Amarinder Singh. But the Gandhi family has failed to resolve the conflicts in Punjab. Now, it is largely believed that Congress will lose the Punjab election in 2022.
Under these circumstances, if the Gandhi family is not removed from Congress, the traditional party will soon die and the Indian democracy will be crushed under Modi’s diktats. Obviously, the Congress rebels must unite to remove Gandhis and give control of the party in some safe hands.
By Rakesh Raman, who is a national award-winning journalist and social activist. He is the founder of a humanitarian organization RMN Foundation which is working in diverse areas to help the disadvantaged and distressed people in the society.
