Friday, 17 May, 2024
By: Anshul Vipat
The Indian National Congress needs an immediate overhaul to have a future
"I am deeply hurt and humiliated. I am sorry", Congress leader Anand Sharma said as he resigned as the head of the steering committee of the Himachal Pradesh Congress. The veteran leader in a letter to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, said that his self-respect is “non-negotiable” and he has resigned from the post. He later tweeted that he resigned with a “heavy heart" and that he would remain a “lifelong congressman". “Committed to Congress ideology that runs in my blood, let there be no doubts about this! However, given the continuing exclusion and insults, as a self-respecting person- I was left with no choice," he further tweeted.
Sharma's resignation comes days after Ghulam Nabi Azad resigned as chairman of the campaign committee in Jammu and Kashmir. Both Sharma and Azad were members of the G23 grouping, a faction of senior leaders who have been demanding seeking major organisational changes within the party. Another member of the group Kapil Sibal had resigned from the party in May. Prior to Sibal, former Punjab Congress Chief Sunil Jakhar had left the party only to join the BJP. Former Law Minister Ashwani Kumar and ex Union Minister RPN Singh too parted ways with the Congress and lately Hardik Patel, the Gujarat Congress working president, too left the party.
Grand old party’s grand old problems
Congress, that governed India for most of the period since independence has been in bad shape since 2014, but things have got much worse after its defeat in the 2019 general election. The party that won over 400 seats in 1984 could not even muster enough seats to form the opposition in 2019. The party that was able to gather close to 50 percent vote share three decades ago has dropped into the twenties.
Infact, the party has not been able to win a single Assembly election since the 2019 debacle. The grand old party's last assembly victory came in 2018 when it won Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. It lost the latter state due to internal infighting. Congress is a very small partner in the collation governments in Jharkhand, Bihar and Tamil Nadu, led by the JMM, JDU and DMK respectively. The Congress has only 18 seats in the Tamil Nadu Assembly, 19 in Bihar and just 16 seats in Jharkhand. Out of the 17 states that went into polls since 2019, Congress' vote share remained between five per cent and 16 per cent. 12 out of these 17 states saw a drop in the vote share.
The problem is far more serious than one may believe. Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh will go to the polls by the end of 2022. In the former, BJP has been in power for 27 years. Yet, current trends doesn't suggest any hope for the Congress. Neither does it seems it will be able to muster a regime change in the 2024 general elections. The writing on the wall is clear. The Indian National Congress needs an immediate overhaul to have a future.
