Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, May 10: Despite going from bad to worse in the elections after elections, majority of members of the Congress Working Committee blocked the way of the dissidents demanding election of a “full-time president” to revamp the party.
Within hours after setting June 23 for the election of the new president to succeed the interim president Sonia Gandhi, the CWC on Monday again postponed the elections “to a later date” on the inexplicable grounds of the prevailing Covid situation in the country.
While the party participated in the elections to the four states and one union territory despite the Covid conditions facing the public last month and came out a cropper everywhere, it did not explain how Covid would come in the way of the party’s internal arrangements for holding the election of the president. The CWC “on demand of a majority of the members decided to postpone the elections till the Covid situation improved,” a party spokesman said after the meeting of the CWC. It was the third time that the presidential elections had been pushed down the party’s work order since last year.
Addressing a press conference after the CWC meet, senior Congress leader KC Venugopal said the committee members opined that this was not the right time to conduct elections.
“All energy should be channelised to provide relief and support work. It was unanimously decided to defer elections further temporarily,” Venugopal said.
The post of Congress president has remained vacant since Rahul Gandhi resigned after the drubbing in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
The CWC discussed both the prevailing pandemic situation and the party’s poor performance in the just-concluded state Assembly elections. Party’s interim president Sonia Gandhi acknowledged the need to introspect into the party’s repeated setbacks in the assembly elections and that there is “a need to put the house in order”.
At the crucial meeting, Sonia Gandhi also said that she intends to set up a small group to look at every aspect that caused the poll debacle for Congress in the recent elections.
“We have to take note of our serious setbacks. To say that we are deeply disappointed is to make an understatement,” said Sonia Gandhi on the party’s poor show.
The Congress failed even to open its account in West Bengal in alliance with the Left Front and ISF and failed to win back power in Kerala and Assam, besides also losing Puducherry. It only came to power in Tamil Nadu riding on the back of its ally the DMK but the party’s own performance was nothing much to write about, winning 18 of the 25 seats it was allocated.
The Congress party has been waiting for a president for almost two years now. Rahul Gandhi, who had assumed the post in 2017, had resigned in a huff after the party’s total trounce in the 2019 Parliamentary elections. Since then, the party has been operating under the aegis of Sonia Gandhi as interim president.
The CWC has postponed the election for the Congress president thrice now.
The CWC was expected to announce the election in August last year. However, after a charged meeting, the committee asked ailing Sonia Gandhi to continue as interim chief for the next six months. In the meeting, the CWC had resolved to conduct the party president’s election by February but in January it was again deferred till June pending the completion of the elections to the four state assemblies and the union territory of Puducherry.
For the last few months, the party high command has been facing an unprecedented rebellion and is under pressure to announce internal elections for the post of party chief. The rebels known as the “Group of 23” having veterans like Ghulam Nabi Azad, Anand Sharma, Shashi Tharoor and Kapil Sibal in its fold have been pushing for party reforms, including greater inner-party democracy – elections to the CWC and the post of the AICC president but their hopes have been belied again.
Addressing the virtual CWC meet, Sonia Gandhi demanded that the party “take note of our serious setbacks (and) put our house in order”, after yet more disappointing performances in elections.
She said senior leaders from Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Bengal – the states that went to the polls in April-May – would be required to “brief us, very frankly, on our performance…”
“We want them to tell us why we performed well below expectation. These results tell us clearly that we need to put our house in order,” Gandhi said as she delivered the opening remarks at the meeting of the CWC, the party’s highest decision-making body.
“These will yield uncomfortable lessons, but if we do not face up to the reality, if we do not look the facts in the face, we will not draw the right lessons,” she noted.
“We have to take note of our serious setbacks. To say we are deeply disappointed is to make an understatement. I intend to set up a small group to look at every aspect that caused such reverses and report back very quickly,” she added.
Addressing the media, the Congress leaders Randeep Surjewala and Venugopal said the CWC blamed the central government’s “indifference, insensitivity, incompetence” for the aggressive second wave of the pandemic, the CWC raised several concerns about the Modi government’s strategy to combat the spread of the deadly infection.
“The CWC noted with concern that the data on Covid deaths is horribly wrong and afflicted by massive non-reporting of deaths. The solution lies in facing the challenge and stopping the casualties from Covid-19 and not in concealing the truth by burying the data on deaths and infections,” the resolution read.
“At a time when nation’s resources should be devoted to ensuring expansion of vaccination coverage and supply of essential medicines and oxygen, Modi Government is indulging in criminal waste of money by continuing with personal vanity project of PM in the national capital,” the CWC resolution read.
Citing the CWC’s concerns about the Centre’s strategy to vaccinate citizens that fall between the 18-44 age group, Venugopal said: “Vaccine supplies are grossly insufficient, yet the government denies the hard facts. The pricing policy is opaque and discriminatory. And contrary to economic and all other logic, the government has passed on the financial responsibility for vaccinating the 18-44 year population to the State governments, which are already facing severe financial stress.”
“Worse, the mandatory online registration without a walk-in option will exclude — and may have already excluded —millions of our citizens, particularly those in rural areas and those belonging to the weaker sections of society,” he added.
India, in the last 24 hours, recorded 3,66,161 fresh Covid-19 cases and 3,754 related deaths. This is for the first time after four straight days that India’s Covid-19 count has risen by less than 4,00,000 fresh infections. The country’s daily death toll, too, was more than 4,000 in the last two days. However, only 14.74 lakh samples were tested on Sunday, compared to the usual 18-19 lakh samples a day.
Meanwhile, Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury wrote to President Ram Nath Kovind on Monday, urging him to convene a special session of Parliament to discuss the ensuing Covid crisis. “Corona pandemic in the country is in a grave situation and you must be well informed about the exact scenario,” the letter read.