Rahul’s biggest challenge is fixing organisational flaws

However, Gandhi, who is harping on the “Bihar model” to regain the Congress base is confronted with a bigger challenge of putting his own house in order.

Rahul gandhi, AICC, congress, rahul challenge, mumbai news

Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi

AICC Vice-President Rahul Gandhi appears to have adopted the tried and tested formula of uniting the faction-ridden Congress by taking the battle against the BJP to the streets as he hops from one state to another in the coming days.

However, Gandhi, who is harping on the “Bihar model” to regain the Congress base is confronted with a bigger challenge of putting his own house in order.
A senior AICC functionary said, “While reckoning that differences within the party is healthy, Rahul clearly makes the distinction that dissidence is detrimental for organisational growth and cannot be tolerated.”

At the end of Gandhi’s two-day Mumbai tour, Congress leaders admit that the biggest organisational challenge ahead is to unite old and new Congress leaders and make the party’s welfare a common purpose if it has to regain the lost electoral base.

The Congress leadership believes that unless they emerge strong, acceptability within regional forces would neither be easy nor work to their advantage. To consolidate the “Bihar model”, the party would have to revive its lost base in every state where elections are due in 2016-17.

What was a cakewalk in Bihar might not be in Maharashtra as the NCP is on an equal footing. Or in UP where the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party have a stronger base and acceptability in terms of caste and community composition.

And if the Congress would have to play a secondary role, it would undermine the leadership of Rahul and Sonia Gandhi.

An AICC leader said, “In public, we attribute the dent in the image of the Narendra Modi-led government to the success of Rahul Gandhi’s leadership. But what cannot be overlooked is that there are multiple factors within the BJP-RSS which may also have played out to check their growth in the Bihar elections. So, it is still early to draw a conclusion on how much Congress has scored in the last one and half years.”

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“Now, our endeavour is to work to get greater acceptability among people which is a real litmus test,” the leader added.

On his part, Gandhi has explicitly declared that the Congress can win back public confidence by reverting to its age-old pro-poor and pro-farmer mantra. He firmly believes that the perception of BJP’s tilt towards the rich and business class would work to his advantage.

Another senior AICC functinary revealed, “It’s just a matter of time when Rahul would take the reins of the party from his mother.” Unlike in the past, where the party was driven by the AICC core committee, Rahul is believed to spend more time on open discussions with leaders before taking any decision.

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