NEED RESURGENT CONGRESS, PARTY NEEDS TO SHOW IT’S ACTIVE: SIBAL
NEW DELHI: The Congress must bring widespread reforms across all levels of the organisation to show it is no longer in a state of inertia and to present itself as a viable political alternative to the BJP, party veteran Kapil Sibal said on Sunday.
“India needs a resurgent Congress. But for that, the party needs to show that it is active, present, aware and is in the mood to engage meaningfully,” the former union minister said in an exclusive interview to PTI.
“For this to happen, we will need to have widespread reforms at the organisational hierarchy both at the central and state levels to show that the party is still a force to reckon with and is no longer in a state of inertia,” he said.
Sibal, who was among the G-23 leaders whose letter to Congress President Sonia Gandhi last year demanding a meaningful overhaul of the party had triggered a storm, acknowledged that at present there is no strong political alternative to the BJP but said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has lost the moral authority to rule and the Congress can gain from the current mood in the country.
The former union minister voiced hope that organisational elections, recently postponed in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, will “happen sooner than later”. He also noted that while forming committees to review election losses is good, it will have no impact unless remedies suggested are implemented.
Noting that the party’s alliances with the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) in Assam and Indian Secular Front (ISF) in West Bengal were “not thought through”, Sibal said the Congress has failed to drive home the point that minority and majority communalism are equally dangerous.
He said the party needs to rope in the right people to drive its poll strategy so that it can build upon the failures of the government.
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