With the Gandhis not contesting in the recently concluded Indian National Congress presidential election, the campaign ahead of the polls was more energetic than what was witnessed in the past two decades. By electing Mallikarjun Kharge as its chief, a first in 24 years for a non-Gandhi to hold the post, the grand old party has warded off the ghost -- dynasty politics accusation -- that has been haunting it for years. The 80-year-old Congress stalwart from Karnataka, who was a clear favourite from the beginning, has defeated his rival Shashi Tharoor from Kerala to become the new Congress president but the actual game will only begin from here. He has a plethora of issues to address, starting from sending out a clear message to the people that he is capable of calling the shots and not a puppet of the Gandhis, which his rivals would like to believe as well as talk about. One of the issues he needs to solve on priority is the party’s leadership crisis in Rajasthan, one of the two states besides Chhattisgarh that the Congress is currently ruling. Then there is the assembly election in Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat in the next two months. In 2023, as many as nine states, including his home state Karnataka will go to the polls before the crucial Lok Sabha elections in the following year. Besides preparing for the upcoming assembly polls, he has to arrest the party’s organisational decline, which is manifested in its performance in the successive elections both in the Centre and states. He should introduce an organisational reform that gives space to the young turks as well as the old guards and strengthen the party at the grassroots. There is also a need to check the erosion of party ideology and stop the exit of senior leaders, a trend which is seen of late, through confidence building measures.
The newly elected president has much to work on during the next two years. Being repeatedly defeated electorally after ruling the country for several decades, he has to start from scratch. It won’t be easy to defeat the BJP, which has consolidated its position in national politics since coming to power in 2014, but if there is one person in the Congress who has the charisma, composure and experience to revive the party, it has to be Kharge. He has seen the best and worst of the party; faced defeats and victories over his more than five decades’ stint in politics. He has what it takes to pull the party out of the present crisis and take it forward- provided he focuses more on recovering lost ground than attacking the ruling government. The upcoming state assembly elections will be a litmus test for Kharge’s leadership as well as the Congress before the finale in 2024.