Sushmita Dev’s exit from the Congress is the third high-profile exit from the party in a little over a year. What she has in common with Jyotiraditya Scindia and Jitin Prasada is that she too was part of Rahul Gandhi’s ‘camelot’, a key player in Team Rahul, and also a dynast. One does not know exactly why she quit, though one hears rumours of her not getting a say in ticket distribution during the Assam polls and so on. One could argue that both Jitin and Scindia had their individual reasons, but what stands out is that despite all their access, none of them saw a future for themselves within the party. Yes, they are dynasts, but they did put aside an alternate future to join the party of their forefathers. That they saw it stuck in the status quo and left for greener pastures could also be seen as a shrewd career move.
Manish Tewari was one of the first to tweet to Sushmita asking her for an ‘explanation’ for her actions. Kapil Sibal reacted with another tweet, commenting that while the young are leaving the party, we ‘oldies’ are being blamed for our efforts to strengthen it. Both Sibal and Manish are part of the G-23 group within the Congress that has been petitioning the Congress leadership for some much-needed reforms, beginning with elections to the post of the party president and the congress working committee. That this group has not been able to do much more than hold dinners and write letters, shows just how strong the hold of the Gandhis over the Congress really is.
In fact, some will claim that the ‘real’ Congress is the G 23 as it is filled with leaders who have been the public face of the party for ages, both as the party headquarters and beyond such as Manish himself, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Bhupendra Hooda, Mukul Wasnik, Shashi Tharoor and so on. Currently, the party leadership’s response to the G-23 has been ‘divide and rule’ by singling some of them for party posts and others for a cold shoulder. That they were all present at Sibal’s dinner shows that the group still holds.
The larger question of course remains: who will lead the Congress, and will the leadership give in to the G 23 demands and hold inner-party elections? Moreover, what shape will the opposition finally take in its fight against the BJP led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi?
