For the Congress, the quiet takeover by Rahul Gandhi of the Grand Old Party, without the fanfare expected of a generational transition is, possibly, the most significant event in the year gone by. Over the last few months, it is the young scion who has been presiding over meetings of the Congress’s Parliamentary Party, the Congress’s Working Committee and most recently, the party’s Foundation Day.
Not just that, during the session, it was Mr. Gandhi who was gradually beginning to be accepted as the informal leader of the Opposition, when 16 parties banded themselves against the Modi government on the ills of demonetisation.
(Of course, he stumbled badly on the last day of the session, by meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi, an action that shattered the carefully crafted opposition solidarity).
Mr. Gandhi may not have officially been anointed as President of the Congress, but the gradual fading away — and on key occasions, the absence — of party president Sonia Gandhi has underscored the point that the transition is finally taking place.
The young vice-president appears to be reluctant to take on the official designation of the president. Meanwhile, it is equally clear that his mother has abdicated that responsibility even though her term was extended by a year in September 2016 , and she continues to attend Parliament.
Indications of an impending change were made obliquely in early November when after a Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting, at which Ms. Gandhi was absent, party veteran A.K. Antony announced that Mr. Gandhi had agreed in principle to take over the presidency and the formalities would follow shortly.
That didn’t happen. Conversations with a cross-section of seniors yielded a variety of reasons. Most said it was for the “mother and son to work out the details”, others attributed the delay to Mr Gandhi’s “reluctance” to assume responsibility. A third lot said, watch the signs. Well, for Congress-watchers, it is now quite clear that the spotlight is on the son rather than the mother, who has retreated into the shadows.
The year may have started on a relatively positive note for the party, with the victory of the grand coalition in Bihar, of which the Congress was the junior-most partner. But since then, the news has not been good. There was the BJP-engineered toppling of Congress governments in Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh — in the former, the party regained its government through a court order, but the factionalism continues. It lost State governments in Kerala and Assam, the latter largely because it failed to retain its number two in the state.
Open secret
Indeed, so weak is the Congress high command that in Haryana earlier this year, top state leaders conspired to get the official Rajya Sabha candidate defeated, allowing the BJP-backed nominee to win.
The details of how it happened are an open secret in the party but, to date, no disciplinary action has been taken.
There may yet be no challenge to the Gandhi family, but the fact remains that the rank and file has grown increasingly disenchanted. Acts of sabotage are reminders to the leadership that no one in the party can be taken for granted.
The States where the Congress is in power has shrunk. It is now confined to Karnataka and Puducherry , the hill states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand in the north, Manipur, Meghalaya and Mizoram in the North-east and part of the Nitish Kumar-led grand coalition in Bihar. The party’s footprint has shrunk in the vast swathe of central and western India.
The elections in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Uttarakhand are the immediate challenges the party will face in the coming days.
