Whispers for a change in the Congress party may have grown louder but the sporadic dissidence has failed to muster enough strength to challenge the old guard leadership of Virbhadra Singh, whose wife Pratibha Singh also lost out to a newcomer in the parliamentary elections.
Where young Turk Rajesh Dharmani, a two-time MlA from Bilaspur, soon after the polling concluded but before the results were declared, resigned as chief parliamentary secretary to join a growing group of dissidents, other detractors like senior leader Asha Kumari had at the very outset refused to join the Virbhadra cabinet after winning the Assembly poll in December 2012.
Defying the odds, the BJP had obtained a clear lead in 59 of the 68 assembly seat, including the prestigious Shimla rural seat represented by the Chief Minister himself.Congressmen are now feeling the heat of an eroded base even though the assembly election is more than three years away. A cabinet minister, sympathising with the dissidents confided with The Pioneer, “they are rebels without a leader and the high command is hardly in a position to thrust any new leader on the State here.”
In the run up to the State assembly election, senior minister Kaul Singh Thakur had staked a claim to lead the party into the elections but had retracted after Virbhadra Singh had insisted on fighting the elections under his leadership.
Another senior minister GS Bali also holds chief ministerial aspirations and is a rival to Kaul Singh’s claim.The dissidents are said to be grouping around former union minister Anand Sharma to challenge Virbhadra’s domain but lack numbers to tilt the balance.“Sharma is a favorite of 10 Janpath, but given the discomfiture Rahul and Sonia Gandhi are facing for the party’s rout in the parliamentary polls, the party president and vice-president are hardly in a position to push for a change in the State,” said the minister on conditions of anonymity.
Unmindful of the dissidence in the party, Virbhadra before heading for Delhi on Tuesday to apprise the leaders about the reasons of defeat in the State said, “There are 3-4 Congress legislators who keep making noise but nothing will happen as the party is with me.”In fact to send the message as to who is the boss in the State, the Chief Minister appointed four Congressmen, which include former MlA’s Vijay Singh Mankotia, Harshwardhan Chauhan and Rajinder Rana, and loyalist Ramesh Chauhan chairpersons and vice-chairpersons of State level bodies, late on Monday.
The last time when the Chief Minister had made such appointments, State party president Sukhvinder Sukku and others had objected to them.At the intervention of the party high command some of them were even put on hold, which does not seem to have come in the way this time around.A veteran of many political battles, Virbhadra has been holding complete sway over the party since 1983, when Delhi had placed him in the State to replace Ram lall Thakur, who had to resign over a timber racket issue.