The overwhelming response to the Bharat Jodo Yatra has triggered a “Rahul-only” campaign within the Congress, with key party functionaries dismissing any challenge to his supremacy as stray manifestation of personal pique.
The murmurs of doubt and resistance have disappeared in the storm of support gathering in Kerala where the Bharat Jodo Yatra has attracted unexpected crowds. While Rahul was anyway the supreme leader of the party, the Yatra stamped out in barely 10 days any misgivings that a section of leaders nurtured. Party workers and leaders now have a faint idea of Rahul’s status after the completion of the Yatra.
Most people who have walked through the streets of Tamil Nadu and Kerala over the last 10 days have realised that the massive public participation is primarily because
of Rahul’s presence. “This Yatra would have been entirely different in size and impact had Rahul not been its integral part. We are discovering that Nehru-Gandhi is still the most powerful unifying force in the country. This Yatra has reinforced that perception,” the party general secretary in charge of Kerala, Tariq Anwar, told The Telegraph.
This sentiment is now being manifested institutionally with formal demands for Rahul’s return as Congress president despite tangible reluctance on his part. A day after Rajasthan passed a resolution for making Rahul the Congress president, the Chhattisgarh unit on Sunday adopted a similar resolution. Sources said Tamil Nadu would pass a similar resolution on Monday, followed by Telangana the day after. Other states are also planning to follow suit.
The Gujarat unit of the Congress on Sunday urged the party’s national leadership to make Rahul Gandhi the president of the grand old party.
As the party is in the process of completing the long-winding organisational elections, state delegates were expected to pass resolutions authorising the Congress president to appoint state chiefs and other office-bearers. States like Kerala did that, requesting the party president to appoint state office-bearers. But Rajasthan deviated from the trend and added a second resolution demanding Rahul’s appointment as Congress president.
What is interesting is that the resolution at the Rajasthan meeting was moved by none other than chief minister Ashok Gehlot who is emerging as the consensus choice for party president in case Rahul refuses to change his mind. Sources said Gehlot believed it would be a political oddity for anyone to become the party president when Rahul is the indisputable supreme leader. He told some senior leaders at Kanyakumari, just before the launch of the Yatra, that Rahul alone could lead under these difficult circumstances.
All the newly elected PCC delegates unanimously supported the resolution. Rajasthan president Govind Dotasara said support for Rahul was increasing by the day and even his critics were now praising him. On Sunday, a similar resolution was passed in Chhattisgarh. State in-charge P.L. Punia said the resolution to appoint Rahul as party chief was passed unanimously on the demands of the delegates.
The perception that Rahul’s supremacy is unchallenged within the Congress was endorsed by party veteran P. Chidambaram in an interview to PTI. Asked whether the Gandhi family would continue to occupy a place of pre-eminence in the party if somebody else was elected president, Chidambaram cited the history of the Congress and pointed out that between 1921 and 1948 Mahatma Gandhi was the acknowledged leader of the Congress, and afterwards, Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi were the acknowledged leaders of the party.
“Apart from the leader, there were several persons who held the office of party president for one, two or three years. There have been periods in Congress’s history when the leader and the president was the same person, there have been long periods when the leader and the president were different persons. Rahul Gandhi will always have a pre-eminent place in the party,” Chidambaram said.
It is not open to dispute anymore that Rahul will lead the party even if someone else takes the post of president much like Narendra Modi is the leader of the BJP even as J.P. Nadda is the party chief.
Nominations for the post of president will take place between September 24 and 30 and it is unlikely that Rahul will join the contest. In case nobody files nomination, the party will have no option but to persuade Sonia Gandhi to continue for a while till an alternative arrangement is made.