The Congress has called a meeting of its MLAs on May 14 evening to deliberate on the tricky issue of who gets the top job after their thumping victory in the Karnataka assembly elections on May 13. In the meeting, which Karnataka Congress chief D.K. Shivakumar said is scheduled for 6 pm at the Shangri-La Hotel in Bengaluru, the Congress Legislative Party is expected to pass a resolution leaving it to the Congress national president to decide the chief minister pick.

The Congress bagged 136 seats and the BJP 64. In the election.

Shivakumar and former Chief Minister and leader of Opposition in the Assembly Siddaramaiah have both been vocal about their aspirations for the top post, raising fears of an unpleasant stand-off within the party if the matter isn’t resolved.

Congress national president Mallikarjun Kharge, who held a joining press conference with the two top state party leaders last evening dedicating the victory to the people of the state and promising to implement welfare schemes promised in the party manifesto, is headed back to Delhi this afternoon.

The scale of Congress victory is a record in terms of both seats and vote share in over 30 years. The party has won 136 seats — 56 more than in 2018 — with a vote share of 42.9 per cent. The closest the Congress came to this score was in 1999 when it won 132 seats and had a vote share of 40.84 per cent.

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But it is clear that the leadership does not have any kind of plan or project for that. Kapil Sibal’s harsh criticism that the party’s constitution should be changed if nominations continue instead of organisational elections can be considered as falling on deaf ears of the leadership.

It was after quite a long time that Congress President Sonia Gandhi announced the reconstitution of the Working Committee and the AICC. The move comes after 23 leaders, including Kapil Sibal, submitted a letter demanding permanent leadership of the party. But when the reorganisation was carried out, many of the front-runners in the letter were ignored. Ghulam Nabi Azad lost his membership of the Working Committee.

It is in this context that Kapil Sibal has once again come out with a critique of the leadership. Kapil Sibal pointed out that their only demand was to implement what is stated in the party governing structure. He said that it would be better to change the constitution if the party leadership was not interested in reorganisation of the party through the elections mentioned in the constitution.

Some party leaders claim the Congress to be the largest democratic party in the country. This claim may be due to the fact that they do not see the BJP as a democratic party but retains the character of a cadre party. At present, Narendra Modi and Amit Shah decide things in the BJP. Even the BJP president is forced to tow their line. But leaders of the Congress, which they claim to be the largest democratic party in the country, need to think about how different the situation is in Congress.

Unfortunately, the Congress does not even have the kind of democracy that exists within the BJP. A leader like Narendra Modi was able to rise to the top of the party and the country only because the BJP did not have a family rule like in the Congress. The Congress has not changed the belief that it is deluged after watching Sonia, Rahul and Priyanka holding the mantle of the party for years. The dependent leaders around them are those who do not want this situation to change.

The attitude of the Nehru family towards the Congress itself is now very strange. Sonia Gandhi does not want to continue as president due to age limitations. Instead, Rahul Gandhi was brought to the post. But when Rahul opted to step down from presidency following the 2019 election defeat, Sonia Gandhi was forced to return to the post instead. Sonia Gandhi is still the caretaker president. Priyanka has no interest in becoming a leader.

These three, who do not want to take the lead, are not interested in finding a president outside the Nehru family. What they are saying is that the scripture of the party is to find a new president, working committee and AICC by organising elections even if the dependents object. The practice of nomination continues unabated.

If the Nehru family was once the strength of the Congress leadership, today the situation is quite different. It is such that a revival of the party is possible only if it is properly reorganised with the Nehru family kept away. Even if Sonia Gandhi, the caretaker president, were to step down, Rahul, who is still making decisions behind the scenes and remains unstable as a leader, could not be expected to revive the party.

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