Time to celebrate but no time for introspection
VIJAY DEO JHA
RANCHI
Rahul Gandhi, Jharkhand Congress calls your attention for an urgent housekeeping: your party is lurching to a cold and tearful end in Jharkhand.
Gandhi twice visited Jharkhand in 2009 and 2010 to recruit young and youthful in the party and its party’s youth wing and instructed immediate membership drive.
The drive netted less members and courted more controversies for forging a fraud list of membership. Only the number of leaders has grown but not workers, far and few left in a forced hibernation. And its staunch supporters are wheezing on expired emotion, too unattached and anaemic even to talk about the party today.
“We have deserted old tradition of Congress. Full timers have been replaced by part timers. We need a serious review,” Arun Pandey who took retirement from active party politics observed. Pandey does not shy in going so straightforward because he has nothing to lose because he has already played his innings in the party. “But we can’t speak. Ideologically and organizationally we have made lapses. Sorry part is that nobody even takes cognizance and the Centre is too indifferent,” a senior party functionary said. It gets worse than that funereal lament.
When Congress actually severed ties with party tradition and the masses that matters? It was probably after the end of popular era of Satyadev Narayan Tiwari and Jagganath Prasad Chaudhary who had called a many public stirs and kept the party organizationally robust and mobile.
The pity for the Congress is which its spokesperson Sailesh Sinha denied strongly. “It is the oldest party having its root in the mass. We regularly raise public issue in Jharkhand. It is the strength that helped the party to survive and grow from the last 127 years. Our shares in vote have leaped in double digit,” he said.
It is hard to remember the last time the Congress as a credible opposition actually courted any mass agitation to show its organizational mobility, never mind sporadic and splintered show of protest here and there aiming to secure media space.
State Congress in-charge Sakil Ahmed has specially arrived to take part in 127th foundation ceremony of the Congress to be held in Ranchi on Sunday. “I am sure when the pamphlet of spectacular achievements of the Congress will be read Jharkhand will blush them. There isn’t much left for Congressmen in Jharkhand. All the messes and culture adhocism in party here has been created by central leadership. Some of the district and block presidents will be felicitated for their good performance on this occasion for all that they have not done. This is a deeply divided Congress where everybody is loyal to somebody. Our meetings end with fight…what more,” a senior leader courted anonymity.
That cost party dearly in Jamshedpur parliamentary by-election. It lost because of open differences among seniors like state party president Pradeep balmuchu and Union Minister Subodh Kant Sahay. Party discipline has been tossed in air. The much hyped report of the committee of KN Jha over party indiscipline during and after Jamshedpur was shelved that believed to have passed serious stricture over Balmuchu and some other leaders.
Organizational elections are an unscheduled affair and a full time elected president is an old demand. Balmuchu overstayed beyond his tenure otherwise he had to be replaced after 2008 state organizational election. Three years later slumbering central Congress leadership granted him one year of extension leaving large section of party grudging. Why to blame Balmuchu alone, rests are equally responsible including central leadership for killing the spirit of party workers,” retorted one.
The people like former Congress MP Gayanranjan, Tiwari are not among the list of mourners. That’s how lonely your party’s Jharkhand cortege is, Rahul Gandhi.