Cliques, indiscipline bane of Odisha Congress
The closer the big test of 2024 approaches, the faster Congress is losing the plot in Odisha. On Saturday, the All India Congress Committee (AICC) suspended two senior leaders of the state unit, Md Moquim and Chiranjib Biswal, charging them with anti-party activities. Moquim, a sitting MLA, won from a Biju Janata Dal (BJD) stronghold in Cuttack district in 2019 and aspired to be Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) chief. Biswal, a former working president, comes from a family of Congress leaders.
His father, Basant Biswal, was a powerful leader who served as deputy chief minister of the state, while his younger sibling Ranjib Biswal has been a Member of Parliament. Though the AICC action is meant to send a message of discipline, it is more likely to create further fissures in the beleaguered party, thanks to the politics of a powerful coterie which calls the shots. It is this ambitious group which has turned into the proverbial albatross around the neck of the grand old party in the state.
It also shows that the top leadership of Congress is completely aloof from the ground realities. In the 2014 Assembly elections, the party won just 16 seats and polled 55.35 lakh votes. That vote base shrunk to 37.77 lakh in 2019, with the number of seats dropping to nine. That its electorate has moved to BJD and BJP is a no-brainer, but the leadership has done little to arrest the migration. While leaders with grassroots connections are generally given prominence and due responsibility, in the Odisha Congress, such people remain on the sidelines.
On the other hand, leaders picked by the high command have nothing to show. Many of the past PCC chiefs did not even win from the constituencies they contested during their tenure. This speaks volumes about the poverty in the party. Currently, it is battling a serious shortage of young leaders, while the existing cadre is disillusioned, leaving the party besieged by unceasing factionalism and indiscipline. As it joins regional and like-minded outfits to forge an anti-BJP forum in Bengaluru, the Congress must understand that charity begins at home. That should start from states like Odisha, where it was once a dominant political force and ruled for nearly four decades between 1950 and 2000. And despite bad times in the last quarter of a century, it still has a committed base.