How the Congress punishes its best

Congress CMs have per force had to work with the handicap that the leadership perennially undermines their authority. Like Mughul emperors, the party high command — a euphemism for 10 Janpath and the coterie surrounding Sonia Gandhi — ensures its nominees in the states do not become too independent. Even minor matters are decided by the central leadership. Rank outsiders assigned to settle differences in the states are often clueless about local conditions and end up supporting one or the other faction.

For instance, the MoS in the PMO, Prithviraj Chauhan, was roped in to take the final call on the 9,000 applications for nominations for the Delhi Municipal Corporation and was given some six hours to decide on competing claims. After the Congress’s defeat in the Brihanmumbai civic polls, Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh protested that his views had been ignored. He had wanted the party to go in for an alliance with the NCP, but central observers Margaret Alva and Prabha Rao thought otherwise.

In the Congress it is normal practice for the CM to be kept in check by appointing his arch rival as the state Congress chief. In Uttarakhand, PCC Chief Harish Rawat was an aspirant for the CM’s job and did everything in his power to belittle N.D. Tiwari’s position. A humiliated Tiwari often talked of quitting. Tiwari learnt that he was not being projected as CM for the 2007 assembly election only when he saw that his name was not on the list of nominees. It did not matter to the bosses that Tiwari’s popularity rating according to opinion polls was higher than that of the party.

In Punjab Amarinder Singh throughout his tenure as CM had to contend with his Akali rivals while guarding against being stabbed in the back by his own colleagues led by Rajinder Kaur Bhattal. She even staged a dharna in Delhi, vowing she would not return to Chandigarh unless the CM was removed. The compromise worked out was to make Bhattal deputy CM. During ticket nominations, PCC chief S.S. Dullo and Singh were totally at odds.

New Delhi has generally been insensitive to the feelings of its CMs. Dikshit once walked out of a party executive committee meeting in a huff when the Delhi Congress chief orchestrated an attack against her. But she had per force to eat humble pie and make major concessions to her baiters. The fact that Congress President Sonia Gandhi refused to give Amarinder Singh an appointment was common knowledge in Chandigarh. It undermined his authority and encouraged his rivals.

The policy of not allowing CMs to get too big for their boots was fostered by Indira Gandhi. She had reason to be suspicious, since most of them ganged up with her elderly opponents during the Congress split of 1969. After she became an undisputed leader of the Congress, Gandhi ensured only those totally loyal to her, regardless of their standing at the grassroots level, were made CMs. Legend has it that Bansi Lal’s name as CM of Haryana was mooted by Gandhi simply because she had seen him constantly hovering around her house. Sheila Dikshit may have emerged a strongwoman of Delhi after an unprecedented 10 years of electoral triumphs, but when she was made CM she was a rank outsider from UP who was brought in as a compromise, so that other Delhi Congress heavyweights could be kept out. N.D. Tiwari was resurrected from oblivion and installed Uttarakhand CM by the powerful Brahmin lobby to keep out Harish Rawat, even though it was he who had engineered the party’s 2002 victory. In Maharashtra Vilasrao Deshmukh was unceremoniously stripped of his chief ministership just months before the 2004 poll, because the party believed Sushil Kumar Shinde, a dalit, would be a better vote-catcher. But after the surprise Congress victory in alliance with the NCP, Deshmukh was handed back his old job.

In contrast to Indira Gandhi, her father Jawaharlal Nehru was genuinely democratic, usually allowing the state units to choose their leaders. Regional satraps like B.C. Roy, K. Kamaraj, R.S. Shukla, Mohan Lal Sukhadia and Pratap Singh Kairon had undisturbed tenures for a decade. Sukhadia remained

Rajasthan CM for almost 20 years.

Sonia Gandhi, unlike Indira and Rajiv Gandhi, has not made a practice of constantly chopping and changing CMs. But at the same time she has not accorded them the respect that should be their due. Ironically the biggest loser because of the policy of downgrading CMs is the party itself. With the rise of caste- and region-specific parties, the Congress finds itself at a distinct disadvantage without strong, well-entrenched leaders at the state level.