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Congress Crisis: 4 Types of Rebellion Explained in 7 Charts

Will Bhupinder Singh Hooda leave Congress like Jagan & Mamata? Or will Sonia Gandhi succeed in accommodating him?

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On 18 August, former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda held a show of strength at his turf, Rohtak. In the rally, he criticised the Congress on the stand it took against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s move to scrap Jammu and Kashmir’s special status. The rally is being seen as Hooda’s ultimatum to the Congress leadership to give him the reins of the party in Haryana or face rebellion.

This is also part of the Congress’ larger problem on how it plans to accommodate assertive satraps. But first, let’s look at Hooda.

Hooda’s Ultimatum

There is merit to Hooda’s demand, especially with barely a few months to go for Assembly elections in the state. He remains the only Congress leader with some kind of mass following in Haryana. With INLD patriarch Om Prakash Chautala in jail and his party split into two, Hooda is also the tallest Jat leader in the state.

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In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP swept Haryana, winning all 10 Lok Sabha seats and leading in 79 out of 90 Assembly segments in the state. Bhupinder Hooda lost the Sonipat seat by 1.6 lakh votes and his son Deepender Hooda lost Rohtak by a narrow margin of 7,503 votes.

Congress was ahead of the BJP in 10 Assembly segments. Most of these were in the Hooda stronghold Deswali region - the districts of Rohtak, Sonipat and Jhajjar - and the Muslim dominated Mewat region.

In comparison to the Hoodas, every other Congress leader fared poorly in the Lok Sabha elections. Hooda’s rivals like Ashok Tanwar and Kumari Selja lost their respective seats by over three lakh votes. Earlier this year, another rival Randeep Singh Surjewala stood third in a bypoll in Jind.

Given this, it is not surprising to see Hooda flex his muscle vis-a-vis the party’s central leadership. It must be remembered that even in 2014, the Hoodas had staked their claim through a massive show of strength rally in Gohana in Sonipat district.

Now, the Congress has two options: give in to the Hoodas or cut them loose. This would also form the basis of how the Congress plans to deal with assertive regional leaders in future. Let’s take a look at what happened in the past, when regional satraps deserted the Congress in the last two decades. Four types of patterns can be seen in the splits that took place:

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Splits That Destroyed Congress

In the past two decades, there are three major Congress satraps whose rebellion devastated the party in their respective states: Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal, Neiphu Rio in Nagaland and YS Jaganmohan Reddy in Andhra Pradesh.

Mamata Banerjee

Once a firebrand Youth Congress leader, Mamata Banerjee left the Congress in 1997 and formed the Trinamool Congress in January 1998. The Congress in Bengal was never the same after that.

In 1991, the Congress had a healthy vote share of 35 percent in West Bengal, which went up to 39.5 percent in 1996. This plummeted after TMC was formed. In 2001, the TMC got 30.7 percent votes and the Congress fell to just eight percent. In 2006, the Congress improved a little to 14.7 percent and TMC fell a bit to 26.6 percent.

In 2011, the two contested as allies and came to power, with the TMC getting 38.9 percent votes and Congress getting 9.1 percent. In 2016, Congress gained a little because of its alliance with the Left and got 12.3 percent. TMC swept the elections with close to 45 percent votes.

There is an interesting pattern here. In 2001 and 2006, the combined vote share of TMC and Congress is not very different from the undivided Congress vote share in 1996.

But 2011 onwards the TMC grew immensely, while Congress remained stagnant and restricted to its pockets in Northern Bengal.

It seems that in the long run, breaking away from the Congress was beneficial for Mamata Banerjee as the TMC expanded much beyond the erstwhile base of the parent party. This remains an important blueprint for several Congress satraps.

Neiphu Rio

A similar case is that of Neiphu Rio who left the Congress and formed the Nagaland People’s Front (NPF). The NPF broke the Congress’ hold over the state, first emerging as the main Opposition and subsequently capturing power in the state. The Congress declined gradually in this period – its vote share went from 50.7 percent in 1998, before the split, to close to 36 percent in 2003 and 2008, and then 25 percent in 2013.

But after Rio split from the NPF to form the NDPP, the Congress was reduced to a marginal player in Nagaland. The state is now a two-party affair, with the BJP as a third player.

Jaganmohan Reddy

Congress, which once considered Andhra Pradesh as its bastion, is now virtually non-existent in the state. This is due to the twin blows of the bifurcation of the state and the formation of YS Jaganmohan Reddy’s YSRCP.

The party’s vote share fell from 36.6 percent in 2009 to 11.7 percent in 2014 in undivided Andhra Pradesh and then to just 1.2 percent in 2019 in the new state.

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Splits That Had Little Impact on Congress

An important split that took place in the Congress is the formation of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) by Sharad Pawar, PA Sangma and Tariq Anwar in 1999, in opposition to Sonia Gandhi’s appointment as the party’s president. The states most affected by the split were Pawar’s state Maharashtra and Sangma’s Meghalaya.

Though the split harmed the party in the immediate short run, eventually the party did not collapse the way it did in West Bengal and Nagaland.

For instance in Maharashtra, the Congress vote share fell by just four percentage points between 1995 and 1999, even though the NCP polled 22.6 percent votes in 1999.

In fact, the split seems to have helped both parties tap into newer support bases and expand their respective patronage networks.

The Congress and NCP’s vote share reduced by 2014, but that was largely a result of anti-incumbency.

A similar trend can be seen in Meghalaya, where the NCP’s formation may have harmed Congress initially but didn’t affect the party’s core base in the state.

After the NCP split and PA Sangma formed the NPP, Congress was hardly affected beyond a point in the state. The Congress and NPP are now the main players in the state.

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A Split That Helped the Congress

An interesting case is that of Ajit Jogi’s Janata Congress Chhattisgarh, that was formed in the run-up to the Assembly elections in the state last year. Even though the splinter got a little less than eight percent votes and made an impact in alliance with the BSP, the Congress ended up sweeping the state anyway.

Some reports suggest that Jogi’s party may have ended up splitting Satnami community votes that may have otherwise gone to the BJP.

Those Who Came Back

Several parties that split from the Congress ended up coming back and merging into the parent party. Even leaders as senior as AK Antony and Pranab Mukherjee have split from the party in the past only to return soon after.

Most of the leaders who came back to the Congress are ones who found it difficult to stay relevant outside of the party. These are mostly leaders who, unlike Mamata Banerjee or Jaganmohan Reddy, didn’t enjoy state-wide popularity independent of the Congress.

Leaders from Kerala such as K Karunakaran and AK Antony fared particularly poorly, despite their stature in the state. This is largely because of the entrenched nature of the Congress in Kerala as well as its cadre strength.

Even in Hooda’s state Haryana, most splinter parties – such as Bansi Lal’s Haryana Vikas Party and Kuldeep Bishnoi’s Haryana Janhit Congress – ended up eventually returning to the parent party.

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What This Means for Congress

The manner in which Congress handled the above splits had little to do with the rebel leaders’ capacity to harm the party and was more a result of the party’s leadership’s equation with the leader. For instance, the party did little to prevent Jaganmohan Reddy from leaving the party, despite knowing what damage it would cause. On the other hand, leaders like Kiran Kumar Reddy who bring very little value for the party have been brought back.

There also appears to have been a clear difference in Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi’s handling of rebellious satraps. One of the first decisions that Rahul Gandhi took after becoming president is to ease out Ajit Jogi, who had been making things difficult for the party in Chhattisgarh. He also followed a tough approach to make leaders close ranks in states like Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan.

On the other hand, Sonia Gandhi has been more accommodating in most cases, with the exception of Jaganmohan Reddy.

It remains to be seen what approach Congress President Sonia Gandhi follows vis-a-vis satraps who assert themselves in the near future. Some say, the chances of accommodation within have increased with Sonia Gandhi at the helm.

Fortunately for the Congress, there are very few leaders whose exit would destroy the party in a particular state the way Mamata Banerjee, Neiphu Rio and Jaganmohan Reddy did in their respective states.

The only satraps in this league to some extent are Captain Amarinder Singh in Punjab, Ashok Gehlot in Rajasthan and Siddaramaiah in Karnataka. Even Bhupinder Singh Hooda isn’t quite in their league as his support is restricted to Jats of the Deswali region. Neither is Ashok Chavan in Maharashtra as his influence is restricted to Nanded and adjoining areas. Similarly, DK Shivakumar is an important crisis manager in Karnataka, but not a mass leader like Siddaramaiah.

This crisis of the Congress isn’t so much due to the assertion of satraps. The main problem is that the party’s national leadership has become virtually incapable of pulling votes outside of religious minorities and states like Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

This is most acute in Northern and Western India which is where the maximum desertions in the party have taken place. Many state leaders feel they gain little by fighting under the Congress symbol or under the leadership of the Gandhis. There is also a fear that the Congress’ stand on issues like Article 370 could make matters difficult for leaders whose main opponent is the BJP. This is evident in the pro-government statements by leaders like Hooda, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Milind Deora and Bhubaneswar Kalita. Add to this the fear of central agencies and it becomes clear why several leaders are jumping ship.

Hooda may or may not part ways with the Congress but the truth is that the Congress’ real problem lies at the Centre and not the state level.

(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)

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