Congress needs surgery, senior 'doctors' not ready

New Delhi, June 14: The grand-old party of India, Congress, is evaluating reasons of its drubbing in the recently held Lok Sabha elections.

The evaluators have been getting feedback from different states that the oranisation needs a majot surgery for revival. Ironically, the senior Congress leaders are not ready for it.

It's notable that Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra have asked leaders like Ahmed Patel, K C Venugopal, A K Antony to get feedback from the state units about the reasons of party's humiliating defeat in the Lok Sabha elections.

According to sources, the epitome of the feedback from all states is that the party's organisational structure has crumbled and there is a dire need to rebuild it from scratch, which would require a lots of efforts.

The surprising part is that not even a single senior Congress leader is ready for it, say sources.

A political analyst, who is privy to the internal happenings of the Congress, tells OneIndia reasons of the senior Congress leaders' mindset.

"The majority of the leaders, who still have a say in the Congress' affairs, have achieved more than what they deserved. People don't have an idea of wealth that scores of Congress leaders have amassed.
I am still to come across a single Congress leader for whom politics is a medium of social service. So, why would they bother themselves at the fag end of their political career to do the painstaking task of rebuilding the party?" asks the analyst.

"Instead of batting for the needed surgery, the satraps of the Congress have been confusing Gandhis by pretending to be their well-wishers. At the moment, they are using all their energy in finding an 'obidient' replacement of Congress President Rahul Gandhi to please Gandhis. In other words, they are safeguarding their own interests. For, till the Gandhis are in the commanding position, they will be able to call the shots within the party," says the analyst.

It's notable that soon after the Lok Sabha election results were declared, the reliable Congress sources had maintained that party will ask its state governments to take resignations of selected ministers and send them to work for the party.

So many days have passed but not a single Congress minister has expressed desire to work for strengthening the party. It's evident their bosses, who sit at Congress headquarters in Delhi, have not told them to do so.

According to the sources, the feedbacks that the Congress has received from states should make a professional political party concerned about its future.

"One of the astonishing feedbacks is that the Congress didn't have adequate number of party workers to mange the booths on the polling day in many states including Delhi," says a source.

"The other important feedback is that Congress offices across the country are in dilapidated condition and in many cases they are being used by powerful leaders of the area as their personal offices," adds the source.

According to the sources, even the Congress is not analysing its defeat honestly.

For example, one of the suggestions for analysing the defeat was that senior Congress leaders should visit villages to access what were the reasons that the NYAY (Nyuntam Aay Yojna) or Minimum Income Guarantee failed to woo the voters despite it offered to pay every poor Rs.72000 per year.
Today, no one in Congress has taken the initiative.

Majority of the Congress leaders who lost the elections have not bothered to visit villages of their constituencies, say sources.

The analyst says that the Congress leaders must learn a lesson from Smriti Irani, who kept on visiting villages as well as urban areas of Amethi despite losing the elections in 2014 and defeated Congress President Rahul Gandhi from Amethi in 2019.