With Sachin Pilot fired from both the posts of Deputy Chief Minister and Rajasthan PCC chief, the old guard in the Congress once again had the last laugh as the generation tussle in the century-old party came to the fore yet again. However, the generational discontentment comes at a time when the Congress is grappling with leadership issues even at the top after Rahul Gandhi resigned as party chief post the 2019 Lok Sabha poll debacle.
Pilot, who was widely credited for the Congress's com back in the 2018 assembly poll, after having worked at the grassroot level in the state for eight years since he took the mantle in 2014, is now a discredited man in the Congress power corridors facing allegations of playing into the hands of the BJP.
With this, Pilot joins the ranks of a teeming number of young leaders, who rose to prominence in Congress's hierarchy in last few years but had to move out after they challenged the rigid hierarchy within the party in which strong regional veterans still call the shots. The dominance of the Nehru-Gandhi family at the top position the icing on the doomed cake.
Former Congress spokesperson Sanjay Jha, who was sacked after writing an article critical of leadership affairs in the party, rued “First, Jyotiraditya Scindia. Now, Sachin Pilot. Who next? Watch this space!”
In Pilot’s case, he was sacked after he raised a banner of revolt against Rajasthan Congress veteran and Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot in less than two years after Congress came to power.
In the bordering Madhya Pradesh, Jyotridaditya Scinidia, one of the triumvirates of the state, resigned from the Congress after being denied the state chief post, losing to Kamal Nath in the Chief Ministerial race as Nath got the backing of Digvijay Singh. Scindia has joined the BJP and buzzword it that Pilot may also follow suit, although till yesterday he maintained that he had no plans of joining the saffron party.
In another bordering state Haryana, Ashok Tanwar, who was made Congress state chief in February 2014, faced an unceremonious exit in October 2019 before the state assembly polls as the Congress decided to repose trust in the leadership of two-term Chief Minister and Tanwars’ bete noire Bhupinder Singh Hooda. Hooda and another senior party leader, Kumari Selja, made peace with each other. While Selja, who also belonging to the same Dalit community asTanwar, became state chief, Hooda was projected as the face of the CM face in the role of the Campaign Committee chief of the party.
In September 2019, Tripura Congress chief and royal family scion Pradyot Deb Barman resigned, first as state President and then from the party itself over differences with party’s general secretary and northeast in-charge Luizinho Faleiro and opposing the “high command” culture in Congress. A day before Pilot was sacked, Barman pointed out the problem of young talented leaders being ignored in the party.
Hours before Pilot was sacked, Sanjay Jha had tweeted “There is a simple solution to the Rajasthan conundrum: Sachin Pilot should be made CM, Mr Ashok Gehlot (already 3 time CM) must be given a senior organisational role to revive weak states. A new leader appointed as head of RPCC. Where there’s a will there is a way.”
However, the party chose to go the other way, preferring Gehlot (69) over Pilot (42) as the veteran managed to parade most Congress MLAs with him.
When a lot of disgruntled young leaders in the party are complaining that talent is being ignored in the party to suit the interests of well-entrenched seniors in different states, the dilemma in Congress as a functionary said is that “these young men in a hurry” are no match for seniors like Gehlot and Hooda, who deliver without much noise.
“What opportunity did Scindia or Pilot not get? While opportunities are given, one has to follow some discipline as well,” Digvijay Singh said.
In Haryana, Tanwar was given five-and-half years but there was no sign of life in Congress. Hooda’s last-minute arrival ensured that the party gave a tough fight to the ruling BJP and ensured at least a hung verdict with substantial numbers.” Even in Punjab, it is the 78-year-old Amarinder Singh, who delivered the party to the state and not leaders like Pratap Singh Bajwa or Navjot Singh Sidhu.
In Madhya Pradesh too, Congress had earlier appointed youth leader Arun Yadav as party chief in January 2014 but Congress could come to power only when veterans like Kamal Nath and Digvijaya Singh joined hands with a relatively young Scindia in 2018. Nath had replaced Yadav as state party chief in April 2018, six months before the state polls. In March this year when Scindia resigned and the Kamal Nath-led government fell, Yadav accused Scindia of betrayal saying people would teach a lesson to “Mir Jafar and Jaichands”.
In the 2013 MP polls, Scindia was the campaign committee chief and the Congress's likely choice for CM but the organisation was in control of Digvijay Singh and the continued bickering among senior Congress leaders then ensured that the BJP had an easy win.
In August 2019, Jharkhand Congress chief Ajoy Kumar, an IPS officer turned politician, quit the party slamming the seniors in the state politics in a three-page letter to Rahul Gandhi in which he accused the old generation leaders in the state of only seeking to grab political posts for personal benefits.
It’s a different matter that Congress, which could win only one of 14 Lok Sabha seats in the state in 2019, that too due to the clout of former Chief Minister Madhu Koda, later managed to form a government in the state in alliance with JMM in lead role in 2020 when Ajoy Kumar was not the party chief.
Pilot’s case is, however, somewhat different. As young Congress leader from UP, Jitin Prasad notes, “no one can take away the fact that all these years he (Pilot) has worked with dedication to the party”. Sanjay Jha went to the extent of saying that Pilot had single-handedly won the 2018 polls for Congress in Rajasthan.
Among young Congress leaders who quit in the pas few years, except Priyanka Chaturvedi, who joined Shiv Sena, most found solace in the arms of BJP including Scindia in 2020 and ace strategist from Assam, Himanta Biswa Sarma, who quit in August 2015. Sarma opposed he leadership of Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi ruing that he wasted 23 years of his life in Congress.
In his first response after quitting, Pilot said “Truth can be plagued, not defeated” indicating he plans to fight it out in the long run.
It remains to be seen whether Pilot manages to do what Mamata Banerjee did replacing Congress in West Bengal after she quit it in 1998 fighting against the old guard of the party or Y S Jaganmohan Reddy, who after being denied Chief Ministership of Andhra Pradesh after the death of his father, formed his own party.
Both Banerjee and Jagan Mohan Reddy are Chief Ministers but the larger number is of those, who were eclipsed when they began their solo run like G K Vasan, Ajit Jogi and Kuldip Bishnoi. Many came back to the fold of the party.