Rahul Gandhi’s Successor: Sushil Kumar Shinde the New Favourite?

Cobbler’s son who became Home Minister, Sushil Kumar Shinde is a political success story. Can he be Congress chief?

Former Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde. 

(Photo: Reuters)

Despite protests by party workers and mass resignations by party functionaries, Rahul Gandhi appears to be adamant on quitting as the president of the Congress party. Chief ministers of various Congress-ruled states met him on Monday, 1 July, and reportedly even offered to resign. But apparently even this failed to convince him to stay on.

This has led to intense speculation on who his possible successor could be.

Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, with nearly half a century of experience with the party, was said to be the front runner. But his own reluctance and the complicated task of shifting him from Rajasthan, where the Congress has a wafer-thin majority in the Assembly, has forced the party to look at other options.

According to reports, consensus could be emerging around the name of Union Home Minister and former Maharashtra Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde.

Why Shinde?

Seventy-seven-year-old Shinde is one of the most remarkable success stories in India politics.

He belongs to the Dhor Dalit community, which was traditionally associated with tanning and leather-related work. Shinde’s father was a cobbler.

He began his career in the late 1950s as a bailiff in a court in Solapur. Later, he joined the police force as a constable and went on to become a sub-inspector in the CID.

Shinde joined the Congress in 1971 and became an MLA and minister of state in Maharashtra in 1974, a state cabinet minister in 1978. In 2003, he became the chief minister of Maharashtra. In the UPA-2 government, he held key ministries like Power and later, Home.

A non-controversial politician known for his amiable nature, many see Shinde as the best bet to take along various competing sections within the Congress.

It is crucial that both the veterans being considered for Congress president - Shinde and Gehlot - began their careers in the early 1970s. This was immediately after the big Congress split of 1969, after which the party revived itself under Indira Gandhi’s leadership. Both Shinde and Gehlot bring with them, the experience of that phase.

Compared to Gehlot, Shinde has a longer experience as a parliamentarian as well as a central minister. His being a Dalit is also important as the community is said to have stayed with the Congress to a greater extent than Upper Castes, OBCs and Adivasis. The calculation is that making him as president could help the party retain the community’s support.

The party also believes that with elections in Maharashtra are due in a few months time, having Shinde as its national face could give it a slight boost in support in the poll-bound state.

Why Not A Young President?

The other viewpoint in the Congress was that replacing Rahul Gandhi with a president from the Old Guard would not be a good idea. Take a look at the BJP’s current leadership: Prime Minister Narendra Modi is 69 years old, roughly the same age as Gehlot and nine years younger than Shinde. BJP President Amit Shah and working president Jagat Prakash Nadda are 54 and 58 years of age respectively.

Given this reality, a Congress president in his 70s may send a wrong signal to younger voters. In such a scenario one of the options that was being speculated was Sachin Pilot. Having led the Rajasthan Congress to victory in the Assembly polls last year, Pilot has made a name as a younger leader who fought it out on the ground and delivered results.

However, party insiders say that it would have been difficult for a young leader outside of the Gandhi family to command respect among all sections of the party.

“There are many leaders who are senior to even Sachin Pilot’s father or Jyotiraditya Scindia’s father. They have seen them as children. It won’t be easy for a young president to get work done from them,” a CWC member told The Quint.

Past experience seems to support this.

“The Congress is a hierarchical party. Look at when Ajay Maken took over the communications department from Janardan Dwivedi, one of the main challenges he faced was to get senior leaders and ministers to address briefings. People didn’t want to listen as he was junior to them,” a functionary of the communications department disclosed.

Another name that briefly came up as a compromise between the Old Guard and young leaders is 59-year-old Mukul Wasnik. Wasnik is one of the few Congress leaders who came out of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections reasonably unscathed, being the general secretary in-charge for Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Lakshadweep. The Congress won 15 out of the 16 seats it contested in Kerala, seven out of eight seats it contested in Tamil Nadu, as well as the sole seat in Puducherry. Like Shinde, Wasnik too is a Dalit from Maharashtra and comes with vast organisational experience.

With over 200 party functionaries in the Congress resigning from the positions to compel Rahul Gandhi to stay on as president, the churn is well and truly underway in the Grand Old Party. It remains to be seen what will happen to these vacant positions, if Shinde or anyone else does replace Rahul Gandhi.

What can be said, however, is that even a change of guard in the president’s office is unlikely to lead to a major change in the party’s fortunes. It would still leave two major issues unaddressed: who is the Congress’ face who can take on Narendra Modi and how does the party plan to counter the BJP’s formidable organisation on the ground.