Power struggle within Congress led to Jyotiraditya Scindia’s exit

Former Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia’s resignation from the Congress Party should not be seen in isolation. It is a result of a massive power struggle within the Congress Party.

Former Congress President Rahul Gandhi is trying to make a comeback and reasserting himself in the organization. It would be foolhardy to think that Scindia left the Congress because he was denied a Rajya Sabha seat.

The controversy over nomination was an immediate factor for his exit but the real issue remains the tussle within the Congress Party for the top job.

Rahul Gandhi expected every senior leader whom he made the minister in UPA-2 to resign and create grounds swell for him after his resignation.

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The expected popular upsurge never happened in the party. Those who resigned did so for personal reasons. Jyotiraditya Scindia resigned because he understood that Congress has no future in Uttar Pradesh.

During the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, he was appointed General Secretary Incharge of Uttar Pradesh (west), where Congress party lost all the seats.

In Lok Sabha polls, Scindia also lost the party bastion of Guna in Madhya Pradesh to Bharatiya Janata Party's Krishna Pal Yadav.

Many other leaders like Sachin Pilot and Milind Deora also fell out withRahul Gandhi.

A lot of second-line leaders felt that the party should organise an election for the president’s position and Congress Working Committee. They did not realise that Rahul Gandhi took it as a personal betrayal. This led to the collapse of communication between Scindia and Gandhi, which left him with no choice but to make his own way out of the party.

Despite public abdication, Rahul’s role has remained all-pervasive within the Congress as Sonia Gandhi is holding the baton for him.

So, Scindia’s exit is the starting point and not the endpoint of crisis within the Congress Party.

The biggest grouse of Jyotiraditya Scindia was that Congress could form government in Madhya Pradesh because the party did very well in Chambal division, but CM position went to Kamalnath who ganged up with former CM Digvijay Singh and former Union Minister Suresh Pachouri to sideline Scindia. The plan succeeded but it created a grouse which got bigger after Scindia lost Lok Sabha elections in 2019.

The battle for Rajya Sabha seat was just a trigger. It was the inability of Gandhis to reconcile two factions that precipitated the crisis. It shows weakening hold of the Gandhis on the Congress and decline of family’s control on the party which Rahul Gandhi is trying to arrest. The exit of Jyotiraditya Scindia will lead to fall of the Congress in Madhya Pradesh and may impact the government in Maharashtra where Congress is a junior partner.

It is this tussle between Gandhis, old Congress families and old and new loyalists that has created the crisis. But let us not be misunderstood that Jyotiraditya Scindia is going to an alien party. One of the founding leaders of BJP in 1980 was Vijay Raje Scindia, grandmother of Jyotiraditya.

His father became MP on Jan Sangh ticket in 1971 and he subsequently shifted to Congress in 1977. His aunt Vasundhara Raje has been BJP Chief Minister of Rajasthan.

Scindia has been a primary member of the Congress party for the last 18 years and his resignation shows the ideological collapse inIndia's oldest political party.