Kharge Won, History Will Remember Sonia, Rahul, Shashi: D Raja has been re-nominated as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of India. Communist parties are in trouble. As a result, the press also does not keep much information about when and where the party congress of the CPI was held. This time it happened in the southern city of Vijayawada.
Lalu Prasad Yadav went to Singapore for a kidney transplant. He has lost strength due to illness. But before catching the flight to Singapore, he was again nominated as the president of the Rashtriya Janata Dal. 12 times with this.
Mulayam Singh Yadav died on October 8. While he was fighting with death, the Samajwadi Party’s state conference was held. Mulayam’s son Akhilesh has become the party’s president again.
When the leaders of these three parties were nominated for the top positions by calling the conference, the practice of the election for the post of Congress President was at its peak.
After 22 years, Congress also elected the president. Sonia Gandhi became the president through the election in 2000. But that is for the second time. For the first time, Praveen Sitaram sat at the top post, displacing Keshari with a blow. It is called a political cue.
After 2000, Sonia became the president unopposed. So is Rahul Gandhi. So there were two main charges against the 137-year-old party. One, the party is affiliated with the Gandhi family. Two, there is no democracy within the party.
This time, Congress elected a new president, and he was an outsider to the Gandhi family. Maybe, he is loyal to Gandhi’s family. Perhaps, he was the preferred candidate of the Gandhi family. The poll results show that loyalty to the Gandhi family is not limited to Delhiites or a few powerful Congress leaders in the state. Even at the grassroots of Congress, the faith in Gandhi is unbroken. As a result, it can be said that the vote for the election of the Congress president has relieved the party from a lot of gloom.
Sashi Tharoor, a close friend of the Gandhi family, also has this achievement. Despite hundreds of requests, Rahul Gandhi did not want to be the president anymore. Did not want to be a member of the Gandhi family. And if Rahul was a candidate, there would not have been a vote, it was self-evident. Of the 416 ballots that were rejected in the presidential poll, many of those Congress voters wrote Rahul Gandhi’s name as the third candidate and then ticked it. As a result, research on the Gandhi family’s establishment in the minds of Congress workers is difficult to ignore.
Shashi has to be credited for the fact that he stayed in the fight even though he was certain to lose by a huge margin. He did not go back for fear of drowning. As a result, Kharge is going to take over as the elected president through competition. It is an important chapter for democracy within the Congress and for the country too, no doubt.
Shashi has said from the beginning that his aim is to bring back a democratic atmosphere in the party. The purpose is to bring the party out of the family, the court. Tarot has done his duty. The rest belongs to the Gandhi family and the rest of Congress.
The BJP has promoted nine presidents during the 24 years the Congress was under the ax of the Gandhi family. But it is good to know, in the last 41 years after birth, not a single president of that party has fought for the party’s votes and sat in the top position. Amit Shah and JP Nadda became president with support from Narendra Modi and Mohan Bhagwat. Rajnath Singh and Nitin Gadkari were able to occupy the top posts of the party at the will of the RSS. There is no internal democracy in BJP. In the era of Modi, the president is just a lamppost. Modi-Shah is the last word.
Regional parties are again strongly individualistic. Mulayam gave up the Chief Minister’s chair to his son, Lalu Prasad has installed the entire family in key RJD posts. In his absence, son Tejashwi or daughter Misha will occupy the top position, who knows?
A few months ago, Mamata Banerjee was again elected unopposed as the chairperson of the Trinamool at the Netaji Indoor Stadium. BJD in Odisha, YSR Congress in Andhra, TRS in Telangana, DMK in Tamil Nadu, everywhere is the same picture. The individual and his family are entitled to the party.
The right-wing parties are individual and family systems and the Communist Party is a party system. The panel presented by the outgoing Central Committee at the party congress is decided by the next committee. The general secretary of the party is fixed. The delegates at the party congress raised their hands to welcome him. There is no ban on voting except for one or two exceptions. The will of the leader-comrade is the last thing. In CPM, polling has been held in several districts including Kolkata. But after Prakash Karat, why Sitaram Yechury will be the general secretary of the party, why not Brinda Karat, there is no room for discussion in the party. Some leaders decide the fate of the party.
Dipankar Bhattacharya, the general secretary of CPIML, which recently rose in Bengal, has been holding that post for 24 years.
However, it must also be admitted that the Left parties have a relatively more democratic atmosphere in party management. Neither Sitaram Yechury nor D Raja can declare any policy position on Congress, BJP, or Trinamool at will. After the group discussion, you can open your mouth outside.
Let’s come back to the Congress presidential election. I knew Shashi would lose by a huge margin. Yet his defeat is pride. Because he fought to restore democracy in the party.
The first of the last two polls for Congress president, Sharad Pawar and Rajesh Pilot against Sitaram Keshri, was a power struggle in the party after Narasimha Rao. And Uttar Pradesh’s Jitendra Prasad’s fight against Sonia was purely a personal rivalry against Sonia on foreign issues. That is why Shashi’s fight will be written in the history of Congress and politics.
