As Rahul sulks and shies
away, can Sonia salvage
Congress’s sinking ship?by Puneet Nicholas YadavO
N May 25, stung by the humili
ating rout of his party in the
Lok Sabha polls, Rahul Gandhi
told the party’s working com
mittee that he was stepping
down as Congress president. Reject
ing calls for his continuance in
office, Rahul gave his party collea
gues a month to find his replace
ment who could then carry on with
the task of restructuring the organi
sation; making it battleready in
time for the assembly elections due
in Maharashtra, Haryana and Jhar
khand later this year.
That deadline for naming Rahul’s
successor has gone by and the
Congress is nowhere near resolving its
leadership crisis as it was on May 25.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Narendra
Modi has begun his second stint in
office; the BJP has elected J.P. Nadda
as its working president to assist Amit
Shah in preparations for the assembly
polls, lynching cases by goons have
made a comeback and skeletons of
India’s economic crisis, that had been
stacked in the government’s cupboard
before the general elections, have
begun to tumble out.
With the newly elected Lok Sabha’s
monsoon session in progress, the
Congress, once again short of numbers
to stake claim for the post of leader of
Opposition, was compelled to name
five-term Berhampore MP Adhir
Ranjan Chowdhury as its leader in the
House—a position Rahul declined to
take. Chowdhury told Outlook (see
interview) that there is “no dearth of
issues” on which the party can corner
the Modi government and that despite
a bloc of just 52 MPs, the Congress will
be an effective Opposition party in the
Lok Sabha.
There is no denying that in little over
30 days since being sworn in, the Modi
government has plenty to answer for,
particularly since its term in office is aLOST LEGACY? The Congress is on
the brink of invisibilityEMPTY HANDS
Mum’s The
Word, Again
22 OUTLOOK 8 July 2019
Photographs: JITENDER GUPTA