It would be a “worker’s plenary”, stressed the spokespersons who remained constantly around the media bay at the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium, which was hosting the 84th plenary of the Indian National Congress. The venue, incidentally was the second choice after Talkatora, which was found to be booked for another political event.
Nevertheless, the buzz ahead of the 16-18 March Congress “maha kumbh” as Navjot Singh Sidhu called it, was to allow loyal, grassroots-level, even booth-level Congress workers to dominate the stage, to address the plenary. Even the stage was cleared, as Congress President Rahul Gandhi said, of the ‘gaddas’ on which leaders like Gandhi, Nehru and Azad once sat, to make space for the ordinary worker.
But the plan fell through, reportedly at the AICC general secretary and state-in-charge level, as they failed to give timely instructions to short-list names of workers who could travel to Delhi to address the plenary.
Among those general secretaries was Digvijaya Singh, who skipped the plenary owing to his Narmada Parikrama – a 1600-km-long padyatra across 110 of the 230 Assembly constituencies that will vote in a new Assembly later this year. His son, Jaivardhan Singh, who at 31 is the youngest member of the Madhya Pradesh Assembly, was seen interacting with party workers and the media.
Confident that the Congress will dislodge Shivraj Singh Chouhan-led Bharatiya Janata Party government, which has been in power in the state for 15 years, Jaivardhan Singh spoke candidly about the tussle between senior leaders including his father, Jyotiraditya Scindia and Kamla Nath, vying for the top job in the state.
“This time, it will be different. Because our senior leaders realise that this is the most crucial year in the history of the Madhya Pradesh Congress. All three leaders will work together. As soon as Digvijaya Singh’s yatra ends, the three leaders will sit together to draw out an election strategy”, he told The Quint.