Sonia Gandhi removes Sanjay Jha as Congress spokesperson

Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday removed Sanjay Jha as the spokesperson of the grand old party, days after the latter had criticised the party in a newspaper article. In addition to removing Jha as the party spokesperson, Sonia Gandhi also approved the appointments of Abhishek Dutt and Sadhna Bharti as national media panelists for the Congress.

This step comes days after Sanjay Jha had in an editorial severely criticised the Congress' 'disintegrating' ideology. He had said that it was 'dismaying' for him, an individual "permanently wedded to the Gandhian philosophy and the Nehruvian outlook" to watch its "painful disintegration" in the Congress. He had pointed out that earlier, this ideology used to define the Congress.

Sanjay Jha had also written, "The Congress has demonstrated extraordinary lassitude, and its lackadaisical attitude towards its own political obsolescence is baffling..."

Pointing out that there has been no "serious effort" to get the party up and running with a sense of urgency, the erstwhile Congress spokesperson had said, "I would like to call a spade a spade here and a shovel".

Even after his removal as the party spokesperson, Sanjay Jha only seemed to take it upon himself to amplify the point that he was making. In a tweet composed today from his official handle on the microblogging website, he wrote that Congress, which was once democratic, liberal, tolerant, and inclusive, has drifted far from those values today.

To substantiate his point, Jha provided the example of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, who had also criticized himself and the party anonymously in a self-scrutinizing piece in a newspaper, as a warning against becoming autocratic. However, times were different then and the party was tolerant of criticism, Jha insisted. Finally, he said that he still remains a committed fearless ideological soldier of the Indian National Congress (INC).

"Pandit Nehru once wrote a self-critical piece anonymously in a newspaper warning against becoming autocratic. That is the true Congress; democratic, liberal, tolerant, inclusive. We have drifted far from those values. Why? I remain a committed fearless ideological soldier of INC," Sanjay Jha tweeted.

Pandit Nehru once wrote a self-critical piece anonymously in a newspaper warning against becoming autocratic. That is the true Congress;democratic, liberal, tolerant, inclusive. We have drifted far from those values. Why?

I remain a committed fearless ideological soldier of INC.

— Sanjay Jha (@JhaSanjay) June 18, 2020

For some context: In what is referred to as one of the highlights of early Indian politics, the country's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had in 1937 written an essay titled "Rashtrapati" on the pages of the Modern Review - a Calcutta-based monthly journal. Writing under the pseudonym 'Chanakya', Nehru had anonymously criticized his own pride and position and addressed concerns about his and the INC's prominence as Caesarism. Having won the post of the INC president for three straight times in a row and enjoying immense popularity among the Indian electocracy, Nehru was reportedly worried about him and the INC unwittingly following the path of the dictatorship of Roman Emperor Julius Ceasar and took it upon himself to criticize his own cult of personality.