Congress factionalism and the sense of deja vu

Surprise projection this week of Satish Jarkiholi as Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s potential successor has ruffled many feathers in the rival Karnataka Congress camp owing allegiance to deputy CM DK Shivakumar.

Echoes of the angst have reached far and wide with reports that Shivakumar’s loyalists have sought time to meet the Congress high command in Delhi to understand where their leader stood in the internal power race and whether there was an attempt to upstage him.

After all, Shivakumar has, for months, waited patiently for his chance despite leadership’s hesitation to rotate the CM-ship at the end of Karnataka government’s half term which ends this month.

But sources close to the Karnataka Congress chief say his patience may well be wearing thin now. They term CM’s son Yathindra’s Wednesday remarks projecting Karnataka PWD Minister Jarkiholi as Siddaramaiah’s possible successor as a “positive trigger”, and “a sign that the CM camp is drafting a plan to checkmate DK Shivakumar.”

Congress old timers also view Yathindra’s utterances with the seriousness they deserve.

A former AICC stalwart who has served the party in top organisational positions says Yathindra’s public remarks asking father and CM Siddaramaiah to mentor Jarkiholi in his own mould are a clear dare to Shivakumar in the state leadership tussle.

Another Congress leader, a former member of the party’s working committee, says the high command should not play with fire again and must heed the latent anxieties building up in Karnataka, which is one of the only three states where the Congress is in power on its own, besides Telangana and Himachal Pradesh, which too have their own share of internal power games.

Lingering factional wars the Congress high command was unable to resolve earlier led to the exit of Assam Congress strongman Himanta Biswa Sarma and Madhya Pradesh Congress heavyweight Jyotiraditya Scindia from the party. Both ended up in the BJP and continue to attack the Congress in the two major states which the party lost in the previous election cycle.

AICC leaders closely involved with the resolution of the Assam power tussle between Himanta Biswa Sarma and late Assam CM Tarun Gogoi recall how the former was disregarded even though he waited patiently for his turn to be CM despite commanding the loyalty of most Assam Congress MLAs.

It was only in Tarun Gogoi’s third term (he remained Assam CM from May 2001 to May 2016) that Himanta decided to part ways with the Congress and join the BJP in August 2015.

The Congress’ predicament in the face of factional wars was later recorded in his memoirs by Ghulam Nabi Azad whom the then party president, Sonia Gandhi, had appointed the AICC’s observer to fix the Sarma-Gogoi tussle.

“Sonia ji remarked that Himanta had a clear majority and should be the new CM. She asked me to go to Assam along with the AICC general secretary in charge and oversee the formal election of Himanta as the new leader. The evening before I was to proceed to Assam, Rahul Gandhi, who had not been in the loop of deliberations so far, asked me to cancel my visit and see him the next morning. When we arrived at Rahul Gandhi’s residence, we saw Tarun Gogoi and his son Gaurav Gogoi sitting with him. Rahul told us bluntly that there would be no change of leadership...I then met Sonia ji and apprised her of the new twist in the tale. Despite understanding the disastrous consequences that lay ahead, it is rather unfortunate that she did not assert herself as the party president,” Azad says in his autobiography.

Later, in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, which the Congress won in 2018, the party leadership was unable to enforce the unstated understanding of rotational CM-ship between state stalwarts — a transition from Kamal Nath to Jyotiraditya Scindia in MP; from Ashok Gehlot to Sachin Pilot in Rajasthan and from Bhupesh Baghel to TS Singhdeo in Chhattisgarh.

Now, in Karnataka, a sense of deja vu is again gripping the Congress and party leaders are asking if Mallikarjun Kharge can find an elusive resolution to the Siddaramaiah-Shivakumar cold war. Only time can tell.