NEW DELHI: With the Congress set to hold presidential elections amidst Rahul Gandhi continued unwillingness to lead the party, suspended party leader Sanjay Jha says that former chief had failed to ensure a smooth transition to a new leader. Jha’s latest book ‘The Great Unravelling: India after 2014’ comes at a time when the party is witnessing internal strife over leadership issue and several senior party leaders questioning party functioning and repeated routs in assembly elections.
The Congress is slated to hold presidential elections likely by next month and members of Team Rahul have been pitching for his return while he is not keen for the top job. Former party spokesperson writes in his book that Rahul’s sudden resignation after the 2019 debacle and his obdurate resistance to assuming charge damaged his political brand. “While his acceptance of moral responsibility for the defeat was a noble move, it was political suicide: he was drawing attention to his leadership failure.
Even more importantly, he had failed to ensure a smooth transition to a new leader,” he writes. On being targeted repeatedly for dynastic politics, Jha said that Rahul’s assertion that no Gandhi would assume charge was a move correcting that perception but unfortunately, the Congress fumbled in its search for a replacement and frittered away an opportunity to start afresh. “Post the May 2019 defeat, the Congress, in what is becoming a familiar pattern, withdrew into a dark shell. This inscrutable hibernation is mystifying. A party must subject itself to the highest public scrutiny.
The Congress had won 20 per cent of the vote share, the second largest after the BJP’s whopping 38 per cent. The Congress owed it to those voters to pick up the baton and run another marathon. But once Rahul quit as the president, the party became comatose,” he added. In comparition, the writer says, Rahul is more leftbrained than Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.
He prefers analytics, number-crunching data, facts and figures, and logical assessment in PPP. “A significant differentiator between Rahul and Priyanka is her sharp emotional intelligence relative to her brother. Priyanka’s people-first approach is backed by the modern leadership theory that a successful leader must have a high emotional quotient,” he notes.