The Congress Working Committee (CWC) constituted on Sunday screams regional imbalance, indicating that the party has given up on some key states in terms of electoral considerations.
While it appears the Congress has left Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, which together send 120 members to the Lok Sabha, for the alliance partners, the apparent lack of interest in Odisha, where it has no allies, signifies a self-defeatist approach. Odisha has 21 parliamentary seats and the Congress used to be a dominant player in the state once.
There is no one from Odisha in the 39-member CWC. Only Bhakt Charan Das will be allowed to sit in the CWC in his capacity as in-charge of the state. Das, considered a spent force, has been an integral part of the high command for over a decade but that hasn’t benefited the party politically. There appears attempt to create a new leadership in the state.
Jammu and Kashmir, where the Congress will barely get to fight one or two seats being in a coalition, has two CWC members — Ghulam Ahmed Mir as a regular member and Tariq Hameed Karra as a permanent invitee.
Another tiny state, Himachal Pradesh, has Anand Sharma as a regular member and Pratibha Singh as a permanent invitee. Kerala has three regular members — A.K. Antony, Shashi Tharoor and K.C. Venugopal, apart from Ramesh Chennithala as a permanent invitee. While the state is very important for the Congress, it sends 20 members to the Lok Sabha.
Maharashtra has eight members in the CWC. While Mukul Wasnik, Ashok Chavan and Avinash Pande are regular members, Yashmomati Thakur and Praniti Shinde have been made special invitees. Manikrao Thakre and Rajni Patil will sit in the highest committee in their capacity as state in-charge while Chandrakant Handore is a permanent invitee.
Apart from regional imbalance, the choices also reflect status quo. Mukul Wasnik has been a CWC member for around three decades. When the top Maharashtra leaders were asked about the reasons for the party’s decline in their areas at a recent meeting Rahul Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge held, many of them wanted to question the high command about the sorry state of affairs in Buldhana where Wasnik comes from.
A senior leader who is anguished by the composition of CWC told The Telegraph: “Those who are responsible for the party’s decline manage to keep their position safe. Nobody wants to ask how Wasnik’s presence in the central leadership for such a long time helped the party’s politics in Maharashtra. If you ask the right question, you get the remedy. But the entrenched forces aren’t ready to cut the deadwood. We respect senior leaders but why have leaders who are not active been made regular members?”
The Congress will have to share the seats in Maharashtra with two strong contenders — Sharad Pawar’s NCP and Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena. Out of the 48 seats, the party may get to fight less than 20.
Madhya Pradesh, another important state for the Congress, has only two regular members — Digvijaya Singh and Kamleshwar Patel, while Meenakshi Natrajan is a permanent invitee.
The signal for Uttar Pradesh and Bihar is crystal clear: the Congress doesn’t want to be aggressive and is ready to play second fiddle to the partners.
In Bihar, Tariq Anwar and Meira Kumar have been included in the CWC while Kanhaiya Kumar will attend in his capacity as in-charge of the National Students’ Union of India (NSUI).
Uttar Pradesh, the biggest state, is worse. If the Gandhi family is excluded because they cannot be said to represent any one state, only Salman Khurshid, who is also a permanent resident of Delhi, has been included in the CWC. Another leader from the state who will attend the CWC being the in-charge of Himachal is Rajiv Shukla. It is difficult to say whether Shukla, a resident of Mumbai, represents media, politics, cricket or Uttar Pradesh. Two leaders from Uttar Pradesh who were earlier CWC members — Pramod Tewari and P.L. Punia — have been dropped.
