A few days ago, the Lok Sabha election results were announced in which BJP has secured 303 seats, forming the largest majority and Congress has got just 52 seats. This was extremely embarrassing for party president Rahul Gandhi, who had Prime Ministerial ambitions. In light of this result, Congress has started reflecting upon the party and its campaign strategies to understand where the fault lay.
In this regard, Rahul Gandhi had held a meeting with the Congress Working Committee to restructure the party and after much discussion figured that dynastic politics were the problem. The citizens, critics and the opposition to the Congress party have been saying this since the last 5 years at the very least, and Rahul Gandhi had to lose 2 elections to understand this.
While blaming the party members for pushing to choose their sons for the Lok Sabha tickets, he said that the states in which Congress performed well in the Assembly elections, namely, Rajashthan and Madhya Pradesh had done poorly in the General elections because the CMs, Ashok Gehlot and Kamal Nath, respectively, insisted on giving tickets to their sons even when he wasn’t satisfied. In this regard, Gehlot and Nath had neglected the campaigning in the state and had concentrated just on their sons’ constituency. Vaibhav Gehlot, even after the immense campaigning his father had done for Jodhpur, his constituency, had lost the election. Ashok Gehlot ignoring the state had led to Congress losing all the seats in Rajasthan. Even though Nakul Nath had won from Chhindwara, the victory had cost them the state as Kamal Nath hadn’t concentrated anywhere else.
Rahul Gandhi had even mentioned P Chidambaram on the same line. The party didn’t want to field Karti Chidambaram, his son due to his many scandals. However, Chidambaram had practically threatened to quit the party for this and hence, in an effort to save the senior leadership, Rahul Gandhi had been forced to field Karti.
The citizens this time had completely rejected the dynastic politics of fielding father-son duos, choosing to elect “kaamdars” rather than “naamdars”. The Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee president Niranjan Patnaik, had lost both his seats of Ghasipura and Bhandaripokhari, while his son Navajyoti Patnaik was relegated to the third position in Balasore Lok Sabha seat. Most of the dynasts, ranging from Milind Deora, Priya Dutt, Jitin Prasad, and Sushmita Dev have been ousted from the political sphere.
Ironically, this thought had come from Jyotiraditya Scindia who said that local leaders must be groomed. He had lost his Guna seat as he too is a ‘naamdar’, the biggest dynast in the country right now, with his lineage going back to Princely India. Scindia disapproving the party’s decision to field dynasts is like the pot calling the kettle black. While the opinion is thoughtful and absolutely correct, perhaps he should use it for his own family.
Above all, the strangest thing is Rahul Gandhi talking about dynasts dominating the Congress political spectrum and blaming them for the party’s misfortunes. Though he is completely right, the same thought is applicable to him. Gandhi has been appointed as the party president due to his Gandhi tag, not because of any exemplary qualities and this is exactly what has been disregarded by the public. All in all, what the meeting saw was a bunch of dynasts, sitting together and talking about how dynastic politics has been bad for the parties’ electoral ambitions.