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While addressing around 3,500 party workers at an online event late last week, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi referenced the defection of former GOP MP Jyotiraditya Scindia, asserting, “There are many people who are not scared but are outside the Congress. All these people are ours. Bring them in and those scared within our party should be shunted out.”
In the wake of high-profile departures from the Congress like Scindia, Narayan Rane, Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil and Khushboo Sundar, Gandhi’s clarion call to recruit ‘fearless people’ was perhaps indicative of a change in the party’s appointment strategy as key electoral battles draw closer.
The recent appointment of Navjot Singh Sidhu as head of the Punjab Congress is then, perhaps, the latest example of the GOP’s leadership effecting what many would deem a long-overdue change in tact.
The Congress leadership’s insistence on rewarding the ‘loyalty’ of its senior leaders to the Gandhi family has, for years, been cited as a key reason for the party’s waning national appeal. The dissenting letter written to party chief Sonia Gandhi in August last year, that drew the support of 23 senior party leaders, had made visible the cracks in the Congress establishment and a critical need for it to do some serious inward-looking.
The elevation of Sidhu, despite persisting objections from senior Congress officials, it bears mentioning, has also arrived hardly weeks after the Congress appointed Revanth Reddy to the post of party president in Telangana.
Reddy, a former member of the Telegu Desam Party (TDP), had only joined the Congress in 2017 and as such, by no means could be considered a Congress stalwart. His appointment immediately sparked optimism from some quarters that a Congress revamp may be on the cards in the southern state. Similarly, some observers have noted that Congress may employ a similar strategy in Gujarat, seeking to make the young Hardik Patel its Gujarat party chief.
So what exactly has prompted the sudden inclination toward ‘lateral entry’ hires? Some observers have pointed to the involvement of election strategist Prashant Kishor. Kishor or ‘PK’ as he is often referred to, has, reportedly, been in talks with the Gandhi siblings in recent weeks, inevitably prompting speculation that he may play a role in charting the Congress’ political strategy in the upcoming Punjab and Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls.
In view of Kishor’s recent meetings with NCP supremo Sharad Pawar, some have even speculated that Kishor may play a role in an Opposition alliance to take on the ruling NDA coalition in 2024.
Kishor’s role notwithstanding, a reinvention of the Congress’ strategy is a necessity given the political debacles that have befallen the grand old party since its 2014 defeat. The elevation of former Deve Gowda associate Siddaramaiah to the chief ministerial post in Karnataka in 2013 was but a rare example of an ‘outsider’ being selected over a Congress loyalist. There are enough signs now though that the Gandhi family may now be growing increasingly amenable to such appointments.
