A meeting of the Congress will be held on May 24 at 5pm in Parliament to elect the chairperson of the Congress Parliamentary Party. After the party managed to bag just 44 seats in the recently-concluded Lok Sabha elections, all indications point to the fact that supremo Sonia Gandhi would be made the chairperson of the party.
Gandhi would then nominate the leader of the Congress in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, though it is not certain whether the party leader of the House would become the Leader of Opposition as despite being the second largest party after Bharatiya Janata Party it doesn’t have one tenth of the strength of the Lok Sabha.
Sources say no decision has yet been taken on who would be nominated, but indications are that she would like to opt for party vice president Rahul Gandhi as the leader of the Congress in Lok Sabha.
The name of outgoing Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kamal Nath has also been in circulation but senior functionaries of the All India Congress Committee have indicated that there cannot be a consensus except on the names of Sonia and Rahul Gandhi in the party.
In the meantime, Rahul’s close aide Milind Deora who lost from Mumbai South Lok Sabha seat, is the first to publicly speak out against the party vice president and his team and the manner in which the election management was undertaken. In an interview to a newspaper Deora said that “those with no electoral experience” were calling the shots and they should be held responsible for what went wrong.
After the criticism, Deora has tweeted, “field party work and electoral battles are key to comprehend ground realities. This should form the basis for leadership posts in the Congress”. He said, “My comments are out of emotions of deep loyalty to the party, pain of our performance and sincere desire to see us bounce back. Nothing more”.
Milind, the son of senior Congress leader and former Union minister Murli Deora, has been a close friend of Rahul Gandhi and in the past has made comments which appeared critical but were always made on the prompting of Rahul Gandhi.
Milind is called Rahul's pilot car. Whether it is the same this time around remains to be seen since Rahul Gandhi wants to purge the party of the major chunk of the current leadership and wants to bring in fresh faces.
Sources say his game plan is to virtually demolish the AICC setup and many state units and rebuild them afresh after the devastating defeat.
Two-time MP Priya Dutt, who also lost from Mumbai, has similarly spoken out saying there is disconnect between those who sit in posts and positions and the elected representatives, as most of them are not even consulted even about their own constituencies.
She said that the Pradesh Congress Committee presidents were sent to fight elections and there was no one to co-ordinate the election management, though Rahul Gandhi had said that PCC presidents and general secretaries would not be contesting the elections.
Anger is building up within the party at the manner in which the leadership is unwilling to act after the defeat and so far it looks unlikely that any major changes may be affected in the days ahead. However, it looks certain that more and more people will soon speak out.
