“WE’RE NOT REBELS”
Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad on their letter to Sonia Gandhi
GHULAM NABI AZAD is no ordinary Congress leader. A former Union minister and chief minister, he has worked closely with three generations of the Gandhi family, starting with Indira Gandhi. Often termed a leader with no mass base, Azad, Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, has been instrumental in several big victories for the party and has the unique distinction of handling all state units as party in-charge. He supervised Sonia Gandhi’s election campaign when she contested from Bellary in Karnataka, and was among the proposers when Rahul Gandhi filed his nomination for the post of Congress president. So, when the family loyalist emerged as the unofficial leader of a group of 23 Congressmen who, in a letter to Sonia, demanded reforms within the party, it sent shock waves across the party. Azad, however, refuses to call himself a “rebel”. In an exclusive interview with Deputy Editor KAUSHIK DEKA, the 71-year-old Congressman reveals the rationale behind the letter and the future course of action. Excerpts
Q.For the first time in nearly four decades, you are not a Congress general secretary. Is this the price for writing the letter? A. I have been requesting the Congress president since 2004 to relieve me as general secretary. I was a general secretary for many years under several Congress presidents, starting with Rajiv Gandhi. As the AICC in-charge, I have the unique distinction of handling all states and UTs in India. But, as I grow older, I have family commitments. And it is now difficult for me to devote the kind of attention and hard work I could earlier. However, that request was not accepted. Despite my reluctance, I was made general secretary in-charge of Uttar Pradesh in 2016 and of Haryana in 2019. I’m happy that the Congress president has finally agreed to give me the much-needed rest. It’s not an act of vengeance but kindness. The entire Gandhi family has been extremely warm and receptive to me, even after we wrote the letter.
Q. Are you happy with the new CWC?
A. I don’t want to comment on that as it’s a temporary reshuffle. In the CWC meeting on August 24, it was decided the election for the post of party president would happen within six months. Soniaji and Rahul Gandhi wanted it to happen by October, but P. Chidambaram and I pointed out it wasn’t possible because of the pandemic. Once a new president is elected, the current CWC gets dissolved and, as mandated by the party constitution, new CWC members and AICC office bearers will have to appointed.
Q. If the election is to happen in the next six months, why did Sonia Gandhi reshuffle the CWC?
A. It will not be appropriate for me to comment on a decision taken by the Congress president. If she is comfortable with these temporary appointments, I have no objection. She has to run the organisation, not me.
Q. Why is it important to have an election when Sonia Gandhi has been party president for two decades?
A. Last year, when Rahul Gandhi quit as Congress president, the CWC requested Sonia Gandhi to take charge as the interim president. While accepting our request, she said she would not like to continue beyond a period of one year. With that year ending on August 10, it was important to elect a new president. Rahul Gandhi had made it clear he does not want to return as Congress president for a reasonable period of time. So we needed to elect a third person. It was in this context that we wrote the letter to Mrs Gandhi demanding a fulltime president. Unfortunately, it coincided with her illness.
Q. And if Rahul Gandhi agrees to return as president now? A. The election of the Congress president will take place within six months. If the elected delegates of AICC and PCC elect him, we will have no problem. We will stand solidly behind any elected president.
Q. You also demanded an active and available president? What did you mean by that?
A. I have worked under six Congress presidents and three of them were prime ministers too. Let me give you Indira Gandhi’s example. Six days a week, despite being the PM, she used to meet hundreds of people at her residence for two hours. Nobody needed a prior appointment. She would often pick a dozen from among these people for one-on-one conversations for an hour. It was her way to take honest feedback on the government and the party. Party workers and leaders didn’t have to wait for more than 2-3 days to get an appointment. All this was possible because she worked from eight in the morning to two at night. That’s the template of an active and available leader. There was a hierarchy, but also strong personal bonds and easy accessibility. Unfortunately, it’s not there in any party in India now.
Q. How did you suddenly realise that the Congress doesn’t have an active, available leadership? A. When the party is in power, it flows with public support. The introspection happens when you are out of power. We have lost two consecutive elections. It’s time for us to introspect. I wish we had raised the issue 10 years ago. We are all responsible for the decline of the party. But once we have identified the ailments, we must now start the treatment.
Q. You demanded a collective leadership at the top. Does the six-member advisory committee address the issue? Doesn’t the CWC represent collective leadership?
A. That issue was raised in a different context. Nobody in the party, including Priyanka Gandhi, has what Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi have—a unique combination of aura and experience. So, to help the new president lead the party without any difficulty, we proposed the concept of collective leadership. The party constitution says 50 per cent of the CWC members should be elected. If all members are nominated, they remain in office at the mercy of the president and lack authority. It means they may not speak their minds in party deliberations.
Q. You were a nominated member. Did you have a problem in speaking your mind?
A. My case was different. I was nominated by Sonia Gandhi but was also elected to the CWC in 1992 and 1997 against the wishes of the then party president. But everyone is not Ghulam Nabi Azad. Besides it’s a constitutional requirement of the party to have 50 per cent elected members in the CWC.
Q. You want organisational elections in Congress and yet you blame the same process—introduced by Rahul Gandhi—for the downfall of the Youth Congress. Isn’t this a contradiction? A. Elections, specially at the block, district and state levels, are important since it’s not possible for the party president to have a micro-understanding of every block and district. There has been too much centralisation of decision-making. I would
again like to give the example of Indira Gandhi. Unlike what many like to believe, she was the most democratic leader. As a Youth Congress president, I did not need to take her approval to appoint any office bearer at any level. Now, every decision is referred to the Congress president. Sadly, this centralisation ails all political parties. Having said that, organisational elections need to follow certain norms. To fight organisational elections in the party, one needs to be a primary member and gain experience. The candidate has to be nominated by delegates. But in the Youth Congress, in the current form, anyone can stand for the post of president, irrespective of any commitment to party ideology or experience in working at the grassroots. It is important to fix eligibility criteria. For instance, to contest for the post of Youth Congress president, one must spend at least two years as general secretary.
Q. Your critics say you’ve enjoyed good positions in the Congress, and now that those positions are slipping away, you have raised the banner of revolt, and that it is a ploy to stop Rahul Gandhi from becoming Congress president.
A. I have literally given my blood and sweat to the party. I have been to jail so many times, even with Sanjay Gandhi and Indira Gandhi. As general secretary in-charge of Punjab, I survived many attacks by militants. The constant travelling took a toll on my health. These personal sacrifices resulted in sweet results for the party. We brought the Congress back to power in Punjab. Andhra Pradesh gave the Congress maximum seats in 2004, building the base for the UPA. From
Kerala and Karnataka to Uttarakhand and Jammu and Kashmir, there have been so many instances when I was instrumental in turning around the fate of the party and forming the government. In 2002, when I took charge as PCC president of J&K, Congress came to power for the first time since 1975. As far as hankering for any position is concerned, history is witness to several instances where I voluntarily gave up positions. I resigned from Rajiv Gandhi’s cabinet to work for the party. Not many know that it was my idea to join hands with the PDP and share power in 2002, which cost me the chief minister’s chair. So, it’s this lack of knowledge about my past that is making people level such wild allegations. I’m 71 now. What more can I do except wish for a stronger Congress? The party is my family. I want to pass on the legacy of our hard work and ideological conviction to committed party workers who can rise through an elected set-up. That was the purpose of the letter. In India, there are parties that believe in divisive politics based on religion, caste and region. In contrast, Congress is the cementing force India needs today. We wanted to create a cadre that would carry forward the party’s legacy. If that’s seen as being a rebel, what can we do? The letter was not against any individual, including Rahul Gandhi. We are reformists, not rebels.
Q. You and Anand Sharma are now in the CWC. Mukul Wasnik is in the advisory committee to the party president. Jitin Prasada has been given charge of West Bengal. Is this to break up the (rebel) letter-writers?
A. We are in the Congress, not in some other party. So, it’s natural that some of us would get some responsibilities. Raising certain questions about the organisation doesn’t mean we have left or have been thrown out of the party.
Q. What if your demands are not met within six months? A. During a pandemic, we don’t know what will happen next week. A six-month deadline is far away. Let us first overcome bigger challenges such as Covid, economy, Chinese aggression as one, united Congress party. The president will be elected within six months. We will take up the other issues with the next president. These reforms need a lot of preparation and time to get implemented.
Q. Your critics say you don't have mass support and that this was a drawing-room revolt. Your views?
A. Please check the results of the 2006 and 2008 J&K Assembly elections. How many leaders in India have won from their constituencies with 94 per cent of the votes polled? In my entire political career, I have never got so many supportive phone calls and messages [as I have] since our letter became public. The ideas in the letter have found strong resonance among Congress workers and the general public. Having known how the party functions, the response has been way beyond our expectation. ■
The party is my family. I want to pass on the legacy of our ideological conviction to committed party workers who can rise through an elected set-up