The Congress, grappling with a crisis of choosing a president after Rahul Gandhi offered to quit, felt compelled on Monday to issue a statement to quell speculation about the fate of its chief ministers in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.
Reports had emerged about Rahul expressing anger at the conduct of Madhya Pradesh chief minister Kamal Nath and his Rajasthan counterpart Ashok Gehlot during the elections as they insisted on tickets for their sons and spent maximum time and energy in these constituencies. Rahul had apparently said this at the Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting on Saturday.
This made the chief ministers’ position vulnerable in their states, both within the party and outside. While Kamal Nath is grappling with a destabilisation move by the BJP, Gehlot faced queries from two of his own ministers.
The BJP is trying to exploit the volatile situation caused by wafer-thin majority in Madhya Pradesh, and deputy chief minister Sachin Pilot’s clout has made Gehlot’s position shaky in Rajasthan.
Ashok Gehlot The Telegraph file picture
The Congress had performed miserably in both these states and the impression that Rahul was angry with them further weakened the position of the two chief ministers. The continued public deliberations, based on internal discussions in a closed-door meeting, appeared to have deepened the crisis in both the states. The party has now taken an exceptional decision to request the media to calm down.
Party’s communications chief Randeep Surjewala said in a statement: “The CWC held a collective deliberation on the performance of the party, the challenges before it, as also the way-ahead, instead of casting aspersions on the role or conduct of any specific individual. The gist of the deliberations was made public in the CWC resolution of May 25, 2019. We would request everyone, including the media, to not fall into the trap of conjectures or speculations and await the calibrated efforts by the Congress party towards future course of action.”
The statement added: “The CWC is the highest decision-making body of the Congress. It is a democratic forum to exchange ideas, formulate policies and take corrective action. In this realm and context, members of the CWC expressed their views in the meeting on May 25.
“The CWC looked at the reverses in the Lok Sabha elections as an opportunity for radical changes and a complete organisational overhaul, for which it authorised Congress president Rahul Gandhi. The Congress expects everyone, including the media, to respect the sanctity of a closed-door meeting of the CWC. Various conjectures, speculations, insinuations, assumptions, gossip and rumour-mongering in a section of the media is uncalled for and unwarranted.”
Many senior leaders are privately expressing outrage at the word-by-word briefing to media by some members although the CWC deliberations are supposed to be strictly confidential.
Although some leaks are inevitable, there is extreme unease among the leaders about the sweep of the information outflow, some of it in distorted form. The perception that Rahul and Priyanka are angry with the senior leadership will cause a severe damage to the party.
Some leaders expressed displeasure at the presence of many people in the meeting who are not the members of the CWC. One leader said: “There is a sanctity of the CWC meeting. We have a long history. But some leaders who are neither members nor invitees were not only present but also spoke. This is outrageous. Some of these people were staff of Rahul Gandhi’s secretariat. There were others who were inexplicably present there — god knows in what capacity.”