On Wednesday, Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury launched a blistering attack on Former Union Minister Kapil Sibal, saying that he should leave the party and prove his identity without the support of the Congress party. “Fight for your ideology on your own, there’s no outcome of just giving interviews”, he added. This is a day after Sibal in an interview to the Indian Express, expressed his displeasure over the party leadership’s inability to reach out to the senior leaders or use them properly for reviving the party.
“Who is Kapil Sibal? What kind of leader is he? He got many advancements because of the Congress party. Earlier, when UPA was in power, everything was good for him. Now, suddenly when UPA is not in power, he is feeling bad”, Chowdhury stated on March 16. He also added that the G-23 members of the Congress party don’t have a habit of staying out of the governing power and suggested they stop criticizing the party.
They (G23) don’t have a habit of staying out of governing power. That is why they’re trying to save themselves while criticising. I don’t know what’s his (Congress leader Kapil Sibal) mass base: Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury
— ANI (@ANI) March 16, 2022
Kapil Sibal on Tuesday fired salvos against Rahul Gandhi and the party high command. He questioned how Rahul Gandhi, who doesn’t hold any formal position in the party, went to Punjab and announced Charanjit Singh Channi’s name as the chief ministerial candidate. He also said that the Gandhis should step away from the leadership of the party.
Speaking about the CWC meeting that was held on Monday, Sibal said it had been eight years since the party had lost the Lok Sabha elections. If the leadership still needed ‘Chintan shivir’ to find out what went wrong, they are living in cuckoo land. He further claimed that prominent party leaders in CWC genuinely feel that Congress would not survive without the Gandhis. He said in his personal view that he would want ‘sab ki Congress’ and not ‘Ghar ki Congress’. By ‘sab ki Congress’, he meant to bring old Congress members who left and formed their parties together and fight against BJP.
This also comes as the G-23 meeting is scheduled on Wednesday to discuss the situation in the party after the humiliating losses in five states. The G-23 meeting is set to see the senior leaders, who first formed a grouping when 23 people wrote to Sonia Gandhi in 2020 demanding internal elections and reform, planning their next move amid rumblings in the party.
It is important to note that last year in December, ahead of the Punjab Assembly elections, Kapil Sibal in a press meet had criticized the Congress’ central leadership. The loyalists of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi had then held massive protests outside his residence yelling, ‘Gaddaron, party choro (traitors leave the party)’. Senior Congress leader Anand Sharma had expressed shock over hooliganism and had termed the act as ‘disgusting’. Also, Ghulam Nabi Azad, a prominent face of G-23 of the Congress had written to Sonia Gandhi demanding an organizational overhaul of the party.
According to the reports, several Congress leaders such as Mukul Wasnik or Shashi Tharoor have stopped attending G-23 meetings as some members continue to question the high command. Recently, former Karnataka CM Veerappa Moily also disassociated himself from the group saying that G-23 had been institutionalized which was never the idea. “I don’t approve their relentless attack on the Congress leadership in this hour of crisis,” he had said.
Congress leadership has been facing a hard time since the Assembly election results for five states were announced on March 10. With the losing hope of revival, the senior leaders of the party are reiterating their demand of giving control of the party to someone other than Gandhis.
