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On Sunday, just when I was taking a vow not to waste my energy flogging a dead horse, the Congress, and to rather focus on the dinosaur that the Bharatiya Janata Party has become, a call from an opposition leader upset my plan. “Time to read (John) Dryden, bro. Remember Shadwell?” he said.

These Congressmen are known to have peculiar ways of alerting journalists and so I had to Google the poem Mac Flecknoe by the 17th century English satirist. It’s about the king of “the realm of Non-sense” who was trying to settle the succession issue.

“And pondering which of all his sons was fit/To reign and wage immortal war with wit/Cried, ‘Tis resolved…./Shadwell alone my perfect image bears/Mature in dulness from his tender years/Shadwell alone of all my sons is he/Who stands confirmed in full stupidity/…The rest Shadwell never deviates into sense…,” the poem read.

Gosh, these Congressmen are certainly bitter! I could see where the caller was coming from. His call came hours after interim party president Sonia Gandhi constituted a committee, which was seen as her way of setting the ground for her son’s return to the party’s helm of affairs.

Dryden’s poem was written during the Restoration period in England, marked by the return of the monarchy with the installation of Charles II on the throne in 1660.

I know for sure that the Congressman who called never had any doubt about Rahul Gandhi’s “intelligence”. It wasn’t Gandhi but his politics that he found ‘Shadwellian’.

Also read: Sonia Gandhi sets stage for Rahul’s return, sidelines Patel, Antony and other veterans

Rahul Gandhi’s 34 ‘strategies’

The consultative group, the first one figuring Gandhi since his resignation as party president after the Lok Sabha poll debacle in 2019, is supposed to deliberate on “matters of current concern” (read the Narendra Modi government’s Covid-19 crisis management) and formulate the party’s views “on various issues”.

Well, it’s a difficult task for Rahul’s committee, technically chaired by Dr Manmohan Singh.

In his video-conference with the media last week, the former Congress president was at his wits’ end to target the government and yet look constructive. He used two words, “strategy” and “strategically”, 34 times in his 57-minute interaction while trying to convey what the Modi government should do. Yet his solution or strategy was wanting in specifics, except the much-debated need for more testing and succour to the poor. He would leave it to the government to decide if migrants should be kept at their current locations or sent home. Asked how come he did not find “one-size-fit-all” lockdown a solution to the crisis while his party colleague Ghulam Nabi Azad as also Congress chief ministers supported it, Rahul was evasive. Asked to specify the drawback in the government’s strategy, he said he will answer it after the government defeats the virus. In essence, his interaction stood true to what his media manager, unmindful of the mike, was overheard saying, “We will take questions in a way that they would look broad-based”.

Also read: BJP mocks Rahul Gandhi for using ‘strategy, strategic, strategically’ 34 times in 57 mins

Sacrificing the loyalists

But, anyway, formulating the Congress’ response on Covid-19 and other issues is only incidental to the formation of the new panel. Sonia Gandhi has sought to convey two unambiguous messages through the consultative group.

First, Sonia is finally ready to sacrifice her loyalists for her son. Veteran leaders such as Ahmed Patel, Kamal Nath, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Digvijaya Singh and Ambika Soni, were instrumental in ousting Sitaram Kesri and making her the Congress president in 1998 and then driving out veterans such as Sharad Pawar, Tariq Anwar and P.A. Sangma from the party for raising her foreign-origin issue in 1999. These loyalists created and sustained her mystique and political prowess over the next two decades. They were the “system” in the Congress that Rahul Gandhi hated and publicly spoke about, without naming names, after becoming the party vice-president. Even when he resigned as the Congress president, owning up responsibility for the party’s poll debacle, he seemed to have more grouse against Congress veterans than Narendra Modi or Amit Shah.

The reason for the Nehru-Gandhi family scion’s dislike for the veterans has always been puzzling. Rahul Gandhi is said to hold them responsible for the slide in the Congress’ fortune, but the fact is that it became much worse after he started calling the shots in the party since 2007 when he became AICC general secretary. It’s his failure to project himself as an alternative to Narendra Modi that has accelerated the Congress’ downhill journey. Without these veterans as facilitators, Rahul Gandhi couldn’t afford his jet-setting lifestyle while delivering sermons on political and individual morality. Rahul Gandhi might like to dismantle this ‘system’ but Sonia Gandhi was conscious that he, of all people, needed the same for his survival. The constitution of the consultative committee, excluding veterans and predominantly comprising Rahul acolytes, is the first indication that Sonia is preparing to cast aside her loyalists to pave the way for her son’s return as party president.

Also read: Modi’s Covid-19 strategy has Congress party’s ‘first family’ split in its political response

Core team of paratroopers

The second message of the new Congress panel is that election losers and paratroopers with no ground connect are set to make it big in Rahul’s Congress. Not that election-winning was a big criterion in Sonia’s Congress, but then the premium was on the duration of loyalty to the party’s first family and political and administrative experience.

The team of the future that Sonia is building ahead of her son’s impending return as Congress president are picked based on love-at-first-sight principles. So, if K.C. Venugopal happens to sit near Rahul in the Lok Sabha, he can go on to hold the powerful post of AICC general secretary (organisation). So what if he ran away from the contest in his Alapuzha Lok Sabha constituency in 2019 polls. It was the only seat the Left could win this time. Rahul ensured that Venugopal was rewarded with a Rajya Sabha berth.

Look at the members of the 11-member consultative group. Its convenor is Randeep Singh Surjewala, who lost the last two times he contested an assembly election. He also happens to preside over the increasing hostility between the Congress and the media in his capacity as the chairman of its communication department. And the less one talks about the party’s communication with the people, the better. Another member of the panel is Rohan Gupta, the party’s social media head. Many might have assumed that the department had been abolished after Divya Spandana left but Rohan’s name on the consultative group list definitely changed that impression. Supriya Shrinate, daughter of a former Congress MP, had quit her ET Now job to unsuccessfully contest the last Lok Sabha election on the Congress ticket. She has found place in this group. And so has Gourav Vallabh who owes his rise to his ability to corner BJP’s Sambit Patra in TV debates. Vallabh also lost in the last Jharkhand assembly election. Another member of the consultative group is Praveen Chakravarty, the party’s data analytics head who used to come up with numbers to egg Rahul on with slogans like “Chowkidar chor hai” that boomeranged.

All these members of the consultative group, Rahul Gandhi’s core group, will decide the Congress party’s day-to-day response on issues concerning the people. There are a couple of senior leaders in the group but that’s for window-dressing.

Sonia Gandhi has finally inserted a sunset clause in Congress veterans’ political career. It’s up to them to retire in grace, before she formally hands over the party to her son again.

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