Congress’s resignation leak has multiple targets

Soon after the Congress suffered shattering defeats in several north Indian states in early 2004, Sonia Gandhi had shown a resoluteness when she walked across to the residence of Ram Vilas Paswan to talk about the possibility of striking an alliance.

The buzz at that time was that the party’s tally in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections would not cross 100 seats. But, giving up her party’s earlier line that it would go it alone, Sonia Gandhi went on to forge several alliances and hit the campaign trail with her then-famous road shows, eventually taking her party to power.

There was a glimmer of that same old resoluteness in evidence on Tuesday, when word spread that four Congress ministers — Salman Khurshid, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Vyalar Ravi and Jairam Ramesh — had written to her, offering to resign from the government so as to be able to work for the party, in what had shades of the 1963 Kamaraj Plan.

Two ministers, Azad and Ravi, denied having done this, while Khurshid had sent her his offer to quit, taking responsibility  for the party’s poor performance in UP,  a month back. Clearly, the ‘inspired leak’ that TV channels ran with had come from ‘weighty’ sources, and it was a no-nonsense signal to these ministers — and to others — that the party leadership wanted them to quit the government to stem the slide of the last two years.

On the same day, Sonia Gandhi, backed by her senior colleagues, chose to suspend eight Congress MPs from Telengana, though for four days, because they were not allowing the house to function when it was debating demands for grants for several ministries, which is an important part of the budgetary process.

Though politically dicey — it could be seen as an anti-Telengana move, and the Congress is anyway in trouble in Andhra Pradesh — she obviously wanted to administer a jolt to her party men that they could not be allowed to disrupt Parliament.

The resignation ‘leak’ seems to be a multi-target salvo fired by the party leadership. It obviously wants to  rein in Congressmen who have been virtually running amok in recent months, with their statements made without fear of consequences, the war within the government, which resulted in leaks and scams tumbling out, causing huge embarrassment to the party and the government.
The party had not, for instance, taken kindly to the statements made by Khurshid during the UP campaign that damaged its prospects. Nor to the way Azad had let things slip in Andhra Pradesh and his inability to contain the revolt in the party in Uttarakhand.

While it indicated toughness towards party men, implicit in the move was a touch of conciliation towards its ally, Trinamool Congress, and supporter — and potential ally — the Samajwadi Party, whose clout has grown hugely since the UP victory. The resignation drama could be a signal that the Congress was willing to accommodate more Trinamool ministers — Mamata Bannerjee has been eyeing the Jairam Ramesh-held rural development ministry, with its huge budget and potential for yielding political dividends with many important schemes like MNREGA under it.

Is the move also a pointer that the SP may come into the government before long? If that happens, it could provide an element of stability to the government, which has been buffeted around for months. But then, would Mulayam be willing to bite this bait?

With Pratibha Patil’s term coming to an end in July, and the arithmetic not favouring the Congress, it is not possible for the Congress to get its nominee elected as president without Mamata and Mulayam’s support. So far, M&M have moved in tandem to ensure that a non-Congress person is installed in Rashtrapati Bhavan. This would mark a huge setback for the Congress, which could then lose its moral authority to rule.

There are signs now that the Congress may be trying to rework its relationship with both the Trinamool and the SP so as to placate both, and besides ministries, this would include giving their respective states the financial packages they have been demanding.

It goes without saying that shifting four ministers out of the government into the party is unlikely to set the Congress on fire. It is possible that Sonia Gandhi may have a larger organizational reshuffle in mind.

But the essential difference between 2004 and 2012 lies elsewhere. Then, the incumbent BJP had lost the plot because of its insensitive “shining India” campaign. In 2012, it is the Congress that has to contend with anti-incumbency and the party has lost ground because of a plethora of scams that have hit it, and even more important, because of unchecked price rise, which have agitated people all around.

Having said that, Tuesday’s move show that the Congress may finally be showing the first signs of bestirring itself. Whether it works is another matter.

The writer is a social and political commentator