As the Congress party is getting weaker with each passing election in the national level and the crisis posed by rampant groupism in the Kerala party is deepening by the day, a top leader of the State Youth Congress has asked party vice-president Rahul Gandhi to quit leadership if he is “not interested in leading the organisation from the front.”
Venting his frustration over what he calls the “melting away of a great political movement in the State and national levels” through a Facebook post, State Youth Congress vice-president CR Mahesh says that “respected Rahul Gandhi” should quit if he is not prepared to lead the party from the front by taking over leadership.
“The Congress leadership reminds me of the emperor who played the harp when Rome was burning as it is standing idle” when the party is being decimated in Kerala and whole of India, he says in the post. “(Rahul Gandhi) should see with open eyes how the roots of a great movement are rotting away,” Mahesh said.
The Youth Congress leader, who has raised sharp criticisms against the leadership several times in the past also, has resorted to attacking the very top leadership of the party at this juncture in the context of the uncertainty being felt in the State organisation after the unexpected resignation of VM Sudheeran as PCC president on March 10.
The national leadership is yet to appoint a new president or to give temporary charge to someone even when the party-led UDF is fighting to retain the Malappuram lok Sabha constituency in a difficult by-election. “Mahesh cannot be faulted for his anger. It seems that the high command has no time for such crucial matters,” said a group-neutral Congress leader.
Mahesh’s Facebook post does not spare the Kerala leader in the Congress Working Committee, AK Antony, either. Stating that “Antony is spending his days in Delhi like a Mauni Baba,” he asks, “Aren’t you seeing how the amateur leaders and people of corporate style are making the Youth Congress and the party’s student’s wing test objects in a laboratoryIJ”
Criticising the failure of the central leadership to appoint a new president for the State Congress, the Youth Congress leader says, “The party, which should now be leading struggles against the administrative failures of the BJP and lDF governments, is in total silence due to lack of leadership.”
Airing his impatience at the allegedly undesirable tendencies seen among the State leadership, he says, “We can’t afford to go ahead with the usual bad qualities like settlement politics, group games, corruption, amassment of unauthorised wealth, ideological poverty and washing of dirty linen” in the public.