Not just Maharashtra, Assam, Haryana: Rebellion brewing in Gujarat Congress too

First it was Assam and Maharashtra, where senior Congressmen were gunning for their respective chief ministers rather vocally. But those are not the only instances of rebellion. In Haryana, Chaudhary Birendra Singh, a Congress veteran, could switch to the BJP following a long struggle with chief minister BS Hooda. There have been departures of senior Congressmen from the party in West Bengal and Jharkhand too.

In an ominous sign for the party, the Gujarat Congress also now appears beset by infighting and rebellion with a report in The Economic Times saying there are “rumblings of discontent” aimed at Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi and party general secretary Madhusudan Mistry, who was nominated by the party to be defeated by Narendra Modi in the Vadodara constituency. Mistry is known to be close to Rahul.

The Congress finished with a grand tally of zero in Gujarat in the Lok Sabha elections.

Only last month, Mistry was reportedly “heckled” at a Gujarat Congress meeting. A report in The Indian Express said Mistry had been taunted when he began to list reasons for the poor performance in Gujarat.

On Tuesday, at a meeting in Vadodara, there was sloganeering and anger directed at Rahul, says the Economic Times report. Amid talks of a reshuffle of the Gujarat Congress leadership, there have been reports that camps have formed around leader of the opposition Shankarsinh Vaghela and Gujarat Congress president Arjun Modvadia.

Much of the anger in Vadodara was also reportedly directed against Mistry, who was brought in as a replacement for Vadodara Congress chief Narendra Ravat who was previously picked as the Congress candidate for Vadodara.

“There was anyway resentment in the local party workers against fielding Madhusudan Mistry and the results have just escalated it,” a Congress leader is quoted as saying.

Incidentally, a Congress veteran in Uttar Pradesh who has brought out a booklet describing the reasons for the party’s humiliating performance in the Lok Sabha elections in the state has also pointed out that AICC general secretary who was in charge of UP, Mistry, was mostly absent from the state, busy as he was with contesting his own election in Vadodara.

Along with Mohan Prakash and CP Joshi, Mistry is seen as a Rahul loyalist. Mistry is also seen as a supporter of the party vice-president’s revolutionary ideas for an overhaul of party structures – the rebellion against Mistry is therefore seen as targetted directly at Rahul.

This comes soon after reports that the poll-bound Haryana and Maharashtra Congress units have expressed unwillingness to host his “primaries” for candidate selection – the primaries ahead of the Lok Sabha elections proved to be a resounding failure.

As former editor-in-chief of Outlook Vinod Mehta said on a CNN-IBN discussion panel last week, questions about Rahul Gandhi’s leadership have been in the air for a while. “He suddenly switches on for a week and switches off for two weeks. Congress is still in a state of stupor after 2014 poll results,” Mehta said.

The Gujarat Congress rebellion is not good news for the Rahul coterie. With the heap of rebellions growing, it increasingly appears that the vice-president cannot keep his party together.