There can be no congress party without the Gandhi-Nehru family name but vice-versa there would be no survival for Congress no matter how much Gandhi take an active part without the supports of its able workers. West Bengal, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu office bearers losing faith in their leaders due to the carelessness of their leaders. Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi struggling to grab some fortune for them but on the other hand, they are losing good leaders. They are not realizing the fact that they have to reward those leaders who are pouring their hearts out to congress by creating value-added existence for them.
While spokespersons on TV channels were shielding the top leadership, including president Sonia Gandhi and her son, vice-president Rahul Gandhi, some leaders were aghast at the extent of mismanagement by Gandhis. The party not only lost the states of Kerala and Assam where it was in power, but its alliances in Tamil Nadu (with the DMK) and in West Bengal (with the Left parties), too, came a cropper. Somehow, they managed to sail through to power in Maharashtra with the help of the alliance, but all is not well with the state congress party within.
Rahul’s casual approach, and Priyanka’s way to the highway if hurting many workers. The elections results show that Congress continues to be in the doldrums even two years after its decimation in the Lok Sabha elections. Party leaders admit that Rahul has proved to be a non-starter. Looking at other members of the family…it is better not to have much hope.
Here in Maharashtra, all underserving candidates who joined congress quitting other political parties are given utmost opportunities and the core workers of Congress are sidelined.
One such example is Sachin Sawant, when the BJP-Shiv Sena government led by Devendra Fadnavis came to power in Maharashtra in 2014; Sawant emerged as one of the strongest critics of the Fadnavis government. As the Congress party was dejected and hardly visible in state legislature following successive defeats in elections, it was Sawant who kept attacking the Narendra Modi government and Fadnavis government on various policies and raised a number of crucial, people-centric issues. That is why Ashok Chavan after he became state party president, kept Sawant as the main spokesman of the party. Sachin belongs to the Chavan lobby of state politics.
With a change of government in Maharashtra in 2019, Sawant continued his sharp attacks on the ousted BJP regime in the state and the Central government. As a result, his name was included in the list of persons to be nominated by the governor to the state legislative council. Just when everyone thought that he would take on the BJP as MLC, his luck ran out again as Governor B.S. Koshyari has delayed clearing the list of 12 persons given him by the state government. But that had not affected the combat spirit of Sawant and he continues to be the sharpest critic of the BJP from within the Congress.
Sawant was replaced as a spokesperson because party president Nana Patole wanted his loyalist as chief spokesman and Atul Londhe. Both Patole and Londhe are from the Vidarbha region and get along very well. On the other hand, the equation between Sawant and Patole is just cordial. But the irony is that Londhe is not as an able leader as Sachin Sawant. They are class apart. What remains to be seen now is whether Londhe can fit into Sawant’s shoes and take on the BJP with equal ferocity.
Sawant was upset with Patole’s decision to appoint Atul Londhe, a former NCP leader, as chief spokesperson of the Maharashtra Congress. Londhe had joined the grand old party just in 2016. A Congress veteran of three decades, Sawant is serving as a general secretary in the party and chief spokesperson for 10 years. Patole demoted him to an assistant spokesperson. Congress veterans need to understand the importance of hardcore workers like Sachin Sawant, if they don’t value such leaders, they would lose their worth.
Nana Patole took charge as the Maharashtra Congress party chief in February this year. He succeeded Balasaheb Thorat. Patole has since then taken several decisions that caused resentfulness among the veterans.
