Clearing the Rahul haze

In public, Congress leaders continue to blame an ineffective party machinery and local leaders for failing to take advantage of Rahul Gandhi’s charisma and put up an impressive performance in the recently-concluded Uttar Pradesh (UP) polls.

But an internal document — compiled by the party for the central election committee (CEC), headed by president Sonia Gandhi — concludes that the party, which was expected to perform well, finally faced an ignominious defeat because it ignored the party’s ground-level functionaries while choosing candidates.

The document accessed by DNA also blames the unnecessary meddling by party-dynast Rahul Gandhi’s coterie. It accuses the small but powerful group of an overzealous attitude and attributes the defeats to its tendency to field candidates lacking political acumen.

This is the first in a series of post-mortems being done by the party and focuses on 33 seats. In all the seats, where the Congress performance was miserable, the group associated with the Gandhi scion had intervened and pushed in candidates of its choice. In each of these seats, the candidates selected by AICC observers and local Congress functionaries were ignored.

Citing the case of Sirsaganj in Firozabad district where party candidate Harishankar Yadav came fifth, polling just 4,244 votes, the document says the first choice of the AICC observer — a local leader called Thakur Dalbir Singh Tomar — was overlooked. Rahul Gandhi’s office directly intervened and sent a note to the CEC, strongly advocating a ticket for Yadav.

The note, which insisted on Yadav being made the candidate, argued that he was a former Samajwadi Party (SP) organisational person, backed by Raj Babbar. The note said: “He is a Ghosi Yadav who enjoys a majority among Yadavs in Sirsaganj.” In contrast, the ignored AICC observer points out that Tomar has been an active Congress worker for the past 20 years and was also a member of the PCC.

Similarly at Aliganj in Etah district, Congress candidate Rajjan Pal Singh came fifth, polling a 8,160 votes. And in this seat, the party’s internal survey had favoured businessman Subash Verma, a Lodh Rajput and an elected member of the zila panchayat.

The observer had said Verma, being the only Lodh candidate in the constituency, would garner most of the 27,000 community votes. “Shri Subash Verma would be the best INC candidate on this seat. He could make a significant impact on the election and would have a reasonable chance of winning this seat”, his note had read.

In the nearby Marhara seat in the same district, Chop Singh Baghel managed the fifth position polling 7,360 votes. The AICC observer had chosen professor Bharat Singh, who had put up an impressive performance in the 2010 bypolls. The second choice of the observers, Subash Yadav, too was ignored in the final list.

In the reserved Jalesar seat, the first choice of the party was Deputy Singh, a backward Jatav and vice president of Etah district congress committee. Jatavs constitute the single largest community in this particular seat. But Anar Singh Dhobi was chosen as the candidate. And he fared poorly and was placed fifth. Dhobi had migrated from the SP on the eve of the polls.

The document implies that at most of the places, the enthusiastic Congress workers, who for the past few years believed that the party was on the verge of a great performance in the state, were compelled to work against those they believed should be the party’s official candidates.

“Workers, who had remained loyal to the party through the bad times in the past 20 years, felt isolated during the process of ticket distribution,” said a senior party functionary while analysing the results.

Interestingly, the candidates thrust upon the grass-roots machinery by Rahul Gandhi’s close associates were chosen on the basis of caste and community calculations — something that the young leader derided and repeatedly spoke out against during the election campaign. It appears that his team chose traditional logic and ended up making costly mistakes.