(The Political Line newsletter is India’s political landscape explained every week by Varghese K. George, senior editor at The Hindu . You can subscribe here to get the newsletter in your inbox every Friday.)
There is significant public interest in the organisational election of the Congress party. As the party has said tongue in cheek, no other party has anything comparable for the media or the public to take interest in. The Congress may be a home to all manner of intrigues and sabotages, but it remains a dynamic platform for varied views and personalities. All other parties have a far more controlled mechanism to decide who heads the party, and how affairs are managed. The BJP’s organisational matters are often decided by a handful of RSS leaders and supreme leaders of the party – A.B. Vajpayee and L.K. Advani in the previous era, and Narendra Modi and Amit Shah in the current. In the Left, a handful of party supremos decide, and in family parties it is all too clear who gets to decide. The YSR Congress Party recently elected Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy as “lifetime president” of the party, but the Election Commission of India thought it was an undemocratic move. The ECI asked the party to publicly deny that Mr. Reddy was lifetime president as if that makes a difference.
Internal democracy in the Congress is on steroid these days. In Rajasthan, the MLAs decided that they would not accept the wishes of the ‘high command.’ We can only guess that the ‘high command’ (read the Gandhis) wished to have Sachin Pilot succeed Ashok Gehlot as Chief Minister of Rajasthan. Mr. Pilot had the support of fewer than 20 MLAs while the Gehlot camp had more than 90. They battled it out in total defiance of the ‘high command’ and the end result is that Mr. Gehlot continues as CM.
