For top leadership of Congress, Mallikarjun Kharge is just the man for job

The task for Mallikarjun Kharge is cut out. He has assumed charge as Congress president at a time when the party is at its weakest. Can he engineer a resurgence?

It was a ‘mistake’ that went unnoticed. Ahead of taking charge as president of the Congress party, Mallikarjun Kharge went to Rajghat to pay tribute to Mahatma Gandhi. But his car went to the VIP entrance, instead of the VVIP entrance, from where it is easier to walk to the samadhi.

Managers told him to stay put, that the car would take him to the right entrance. “It doesn’t matter,” said Kharge and prepared to alight. “You will have to walk a lot,” his staff gently remonstrated. But Kharge waved them aside, electing to be a mere VIP, and walked the longer path to the samadhi.

For those party workers watching every move of the new Congress president, this was a gesture in itself: that he was like them, one of them. More such moves followed.

At his residence, 10 Rajaji Marg, after his formal appointment was announced, workers would simply not stop coming. Rather than break for lunch, Kharge decided to sit down amid the dust and the din, to eat with them. “Such things never happened earlier,” said a worker present there.

One of the first tweets by Kharge after getting the top job in the party was not to attack Prime Minister Narendra Modi, not to laud the grace and wisdom of the Gandhi parivar, but to commiserate with the grieving family of an ordinary worker.

Few outside the party knew Sai Anamika, a young office bearer of the Mahila Congress, who, for reasons of her own, had parted ways from it but was still an active party worker. She had dengue fever for about a week and might have recovered, but for the delay in hospitalisation. She died of complications. Even before the Mahila Congress could react, it was Kharge who put out a tweet condoling her death and recalling the many ways in which she had contributed to the party. Ishita Sedha of the Indian Youth Congress said: “The president of the party remembered Anamika didi!”

But there is another side to it.

After his appointment, pending fresh elections to party bodies, including the Congress Working Committee, a steering committee was put in place to guide the new president. Not a single member of the so-called Group of 23 found a place on the committee. Nor did Shashi Tharoor feature on it - the man who was his rival in the election, however, was respectful.

“He should have put Tharoor on the committee. It would have shown his generosity,” said one Kharge supporter.

That’s just the workers.

For the top leadership of the Congress, Kharge is just the man for the job.

“Kharge has the kind of experience that is required to run a party like the Congress,” said senior Congress leader Ambika Soni, adding, “He has held various posts in his long political career. He has been a legislator, Leader of Opposition, and Cabinet minister. He inspires confidence and has the ability to take everyone along.”

The bottom line is whether indeed he has the ability to take everyone along. And how hard is he ready to work, towards that end.

His supporters have a plan.

In the coming days, Kharge will be seen seated in the Congress president’s office on 24 Akbar Road at least two days a week.

“Party workers have a hundred problems – small things like a first information report lodged by the local police, complaints about the functioning of a party colleague, talking points about the Bharatiya Janata Party’s working in a state….They expect the party to listen and respond to them. But only rarely do general secretaries come to the party office. The president, even less. So they are all adrift and don’t know where to take their problems. Once Kharge starts sitting in the party office, others will follow suit. We might even put a roster in place, so that one or two general secretaries are always there at a specified time,” said a supporter.

Another part of the plan is that the Congress president will be in direct communication with party activists, not talking to them through designated departments.

“I believe in consultation and collective leadership… I don’t believe in people following me, but want them to walk beside me. Together, we will work to strengthen the organisational set-up of the party,” Kharge told a group of party workers from the Northeast.

But the elephant in the room, as former Maharashtra chief minister and Union minister Prithviraj Chavan terms it, is his relationship with the Gandhi family.

“Balance rakhna padega,” says a worker.

The fact that even as he was being handed his certificate of appointment as party chief, the slogans outside were all ‘Rahul Gandhi Zindabad’ tells its own story. His supporters say it is unlikely that Sonia Gandhi will ‘interfere’ – she will only ‘guide’. But the leadership of Rahul, especially those who draw sustenance from his continuance, cannot be questioned or wished away.

“The Gandhi family’s contribution to the nation and the party is unparalleled,” said All India Congress Committee Treasurer Pawan Kumar Bansal, adding, “We cannot forget the sacrifices they have made for the country. Sonia did not want to continue as party president. And we all urged Rahul to come back as party president, but he said a firm ‘no’. Now, we have reposed our faith in a person with immense experience.”

There are challenges aplenty.

But the immediate one is to correct the skewed optical balance when it comes to regional representation. The president is from Karnataka. The most visible general secretary is from Kerala. There is really no prominent North Indian face in the organisation.

“We already have a presence in the South. It is the cow belt we have to address now,” says a worker.