Political strategist Prashant Kishor suggested that Rahul Gandhi should step back if the Congress fails again to get the desired results in the Lok Sabha polls. Despite his failure to deliver in the past decade, he deplored that Gandhi is still practically running the Congress and has not stepped aside or allowed others to lead the party.
“When you are doing the same work for the last 10 years without any success, then there is no harm in taking a break… You should allow someone else to do it for five years. Your mother did it,” he said interacting with PTI editors.
He pointed out Sonia Gandhi’s decision to take a sabbatical after her husband Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination when P.V. Narasimha Rao took over the reins. “…It seems to Rahul Gandhi that he knows everything. Nobody can help you if you do not recognise the need for help. He believes he needs someone who can execute what he thinks is right. It is not possible,” he added.
Citing Gandhi’s decision to resign as the Congress president following the party’s drubbing in the 2019 polls, he said the Wayanad MP had then written that he would step back and let somebody else do the job. But, in effect, he has been doing contrary to what he had written, he added.
Many Congress leaders will admit privately that they cannot take any decision in the party, even about a single seat or seat sharing with alliance partners “unless they get the approval from xyz,” he said, referring to their need to defer to Rahul Gandhi.
However, he said: “The Congress should not be merely seen as a party. The space it represents in the country can never be finished off. It is not possible. The Congress has evolved and reincarnated itself several times in its history.”
He also differed with Rahul’s claim that his party lost polls in the past due to compromised poll panel, judiciary and media, saying it might be partly true but not the complete truth.
He said the Congress needs to address the “structural” flaws in its functioning as the party’s vote shares and seats in Lok Sabha and assemblies have been dropping since 1984.
