Why is the Congress not announcing its CM candidate?

By Deepak Parvatiyar

February 2, 2015

The Congress is contesting the Delhi assembly election without projecting a chief ministerial candidate. It does have to do something with the party’s tradition — Wherever and whenever out of power, the party prefers to contest without throwing up names for the CM or PM post. Ostensibly, the high command culture in the Congress allows the party leadership to hold horses.

Consider how the party avoided naming its chief ministerial candidate during elections in Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh where it was in opposition in 2013. Though the Congress could not uproot the BJP government in MP, the strategy paid it rich dividends in Karnataka, where it clinched power from the Bharatiya Janata Party. Throughout the campaign in the Southern state, it was constantly needled by the BJP on the issue of naming its chief ministerial candidate against the latter’s Jagadish Shettar. The state Congress President, G Parameshwara, had then maintained that the Congress’s “strong high command” was competent enough to select a leader and that “all of us will definitely respect their decision”.

Yet, paradoxically, wherever in power, it is ostensibly clear that the Congress has seldom changed its incumbent chief ministers (or prime ministers) and rather preferred them as mascots in elections rather indiscriminately even at the PM level– whether it was in case of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi or someone outside the Nehru-Gandhi clan like Dr. Manmohan Singh, who was the party’s PM face during the 2009 elections.

Theoretically, it seems a strategy of not to disturb a well entrenched CM or PM. It also seems good to stick to a leader and showcase his/her achievements to win elections but such a tactic has often proved to be a double-edged sword for it does not adequately cover the anti-incumbency factor. A case in point is the 2013 assembly elections in Delhi and Rajasthan where the party’s decision to back its CMs, Sheila Dikshit and Ashok Gehlot respectively, proved disastrous and the Congress faced a humiliating defeat in both states.

Perhaps this explains why the Congress departed from its established tradition in 2014 when an ageing Dr Singh was withdrawn from the PM’s race in face of widespread anti-incumbency. However, still the party had not announced the name of its prime ministerial candidate then and left it to the media to speculate. The media made it a contest between the Congress scion Rahul Gandhi and the BJP’s aspirant Narendra Modi. In the absence of any credible face, the party lost miserably in the 2014 general elections.

If pre-poll surveys are any indication then the Congress is already being written off by poll pundits in Delhi. But can the party’s inability to throw up a credible face in Delhi elections prove its nemesis in Delhi this time?

Much is being discussed about the elevation of former union minister and Delhi Congress strongman Ajay Maken as the party’s campaign head for Delhi. Yet, what is noteworthy is that even as Maken’s selection ruffled many feathers within the state unit of the party, and even resulted in the Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee President Arvinder Singh Lovely withdrawing from the contest, the former is still not anointed as the Congress CM face. So can he be the CM in case the Congress springs a surprise and registers an unlikely win in Delhi?

The Congress’s own history makes it sound highly improbable. Just refer to the statement of the Congress leader of Opposition in the Madhya Pradesh assembly. Ajay Singh in 2013 said, “Becoming chairman of a committee doesn’t mean that you become a claimant for the chief minister’s post. In Congress, it depends on the MLAs and the party high command…” (At that time Jyotiraditya Scindia was the Congress’s campaign in charge in MP).

It goes without saying that the High Command’s words are supreme in the Congress but at a time when even the Congress President Sonia Gandhi’s credibility has hit a low with a sustained campaign by her rivals to link her to the scams during the rule of the erstwhile United Progressive Alliance government, wouldn’t it have helped the Congress to project a credible face before the electorates in Delhi during the assembly election? Wouldn’t it have salvaged some honour for the party high command itself?

The Presidential style of campaigning in recent times means political parties selecting horses for courses. Hence in recent times, the CM (or the PM) candidates are pre-decided by respective political parties with the exception of the Congress. What is ironical is the fact that while this trend was kick started by the Congress itself in the past (till Sonia’s ‘renunciation’ of the PM’s post), now parties that take pride in their cadre system and intra party democracy such as the BJP and the latest enfant terrible of Delhi politics, the AAP, have lapped it up.

Obviously in the absence of deliverance, poll promises have become redundant. Hence, the political parties’ recourse to finding faces that could win elections for them.

It is a matter of retrospection whether this phenomenon of personality-based politics undermines the Constitutional provision that puts the onus on the Legislators or Parliamentarians of the party or the group that got the majority, to select the leader of the House or not! In any case, the Congress, with its high command culture, had led the way and now, as others overtake it, it should equally share the blame with them. Till then, RIP collective leadership!