National

Slow Fadeout

Effete leaders lead to Congress' undoing

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Slow Fadeout
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The Rot Within

  • Congress is plagued by indiscipline and organisational disarray
  • It is losing hold among Vokkaligas, Lingayats, backward classes, minorities and Dalits, who are all veering towards the BJP and JD(S)
  • The party’s senior leaders like Mallikarjuna Kharge, Dharam Singh and H.K. Patil seem to lack motivation
  • Others like Veerappa Moily, Oscar Fernandes do not seem to be showing enough interest in Karnataka affairs

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Indeed, after consequent debacles in the assembly election held in May and the crucial eight-seat byelections held in December, the party has been reduced to insignificance in Karnataka. The assembly election saw the party get only 80 seats out of 224; in the byelections it did not win a single seat. Worse, the BJP poached three Congress MLAs and had them re-elected to obtain a simple majority of 115 seats, which it had failed to achieve after the May election.

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With H.D. Deve Gowda’s JD(S) wresting three seats in the byelections, the contest in the state is now being made out to be between the JD(S) and the BJP. The two parties have also come to notionally represent the two dominant communities—the Vokkaligas and Lingayats respectively—even as they pick up significant chunks of the backward class, Dalit and minority vote. The Congress seems to be in nowhere land.

KPCC working president D.K. Shivakumar admitted to Outlook that there was a "small problem" within the party, especially in relation to some leaders, but they were confident of sorting it out before the Lok Sabha elections. How "small" the problem is would be clear if one considers the following fissures that came to the fore during the byelections:

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  • S.M. Krishna’s nephew contested from Maddur, Krishna’s former constituency, and lost his deposit.
  • Congress lost the Karwar seat, which is right in the home district of KPCC president R.V. Deshpande.
  • Siddaramaiah, a former CM and popular leader of the Kuruba community, the state’s third largest, did not campaign despite being the chairman of the campaign committee.
  • Ambarish, a movie star and Congress MP from the Vokkaliga heartlandof Mandya, stayed away from the election campaign.
  • Former Union minister and Congress MP R.L. Jalappa’s son resigned his Congress seat, contested on a BJP ticket and won from Doddaballapur.

Shivakumar laments that over many years, the Congress has invested in many leaders, but "for the sake of power they have crossed over to the BJP". He explains that the party has had no time to "build an alternative and that’s why the setback in the byelections", which he described as a "temporary problem". On the Siddaramaiah issue, he had this to offer: "God only knows what his grouse against the party is. He stayed away by saying that he would campaign only if Sonia Gandhi asked him to do so."

Another big worry for the Congress is the huge division that has taken place in the backward class, minority and Dalit votes. Youth Congress president and three-time MLA Krishna Byre Gowda says, "They (these communities) are no longer the preserve of one single party." Another Congress leader also said that the younger lot among the minorities were veering towards the JD(S) and the BJP. Byre Gowda says, "We have been suggesting to the KPCC president that, as one of the measures to arrest the slide, we must begin to project younger MLAs and leaders from various communities in the party. We should also work towards a definite social programme."

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The state unit of the party is organising ‘introspection’ sessions and desperately seeking to manufacture hope. "Not to worry, we will win at least 14-15 Lok Sabha seats out of the 28," says Shivakumar, trying to drum up some optimism. Many in the party hope that the clouds will have a silver lining. But not everyone is sure that will happen.

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