Transformation of Ghulam Nabi Azad: From a votary of nomination culture to seeking elections to CWC

New Delhi: On March 19, 2018, Ghulam Nabi Azad read a proposal authorising Rahul Gandhi to constitute the Congress Working Committee (CWC), the party’s highest decision-making body.

While doing so at the 84th plenary session of the Congress held in Delhi, he talked about how the CWC witnessed polls less than a dozen times in its “135-year-old glorious history”, adding that the election to the party’s president post had happened on many occasions.

The plenary was held to ratify Rahul Gandhi’s anointment as the Congress president.               

Most of the time, the All-India Congress Committee (AICC) had authorised the party chief to form the CWC after considering caste and regional balance and other factors. “This has become a tradition now,” Azad said and went on to read the proposal authorising the then Congress president Rahul Gandhi to constitute the CWC.

He then asked the 2000-odd AICC delegates to raise their hands to support the proposal. In the video below, his friend and former party colleague Anand Sharma could be seen among those raising their hands.

“I am personally very happy that this proposal has been passed unanimously,” Azad declared.

Move to August 2020, Azad and 22 other Congress leaders, including Kapil Sibal, Anand Sharma, Manish Tewari, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Jitin Prasada and Shashi Tharoor, form a ginger group, which came to be known as G-23, to seek reforms in the grand old party.

In a letter to Congress president Sonia Gandhi on August 7, 2020, Azad, Sharma and other dissenters ironically sought elections to the CWC and on all key organisational posts.

This was a clear departure from Azad’s stated position on the issue given that he had never been a votary of the elections to the CWC. In fact, he had explained at length why the polls to the party's highest decision-making body cannot and should not be held.

Azad and other seniors had repeatedly persuaded Sonia Gandhi not to discontinue the practice, arguing that the nomination culture would strengthen the high command's grip over the party.

As per the Congress Constitution, 12 of the 25 CWC members have to be elected by AICC delegates and the rest are appointed by the Congress president.

The CWC has not witnessed any election in over two decades now. The last time the CWC witnessed a contest was in 1997 during the Kolkata plenary and prior to that in 1992 at the Tirupati session.

Any Congress senior leader would tell you that Azad is no holier-than-thou and should clearly refrain from talking about sycophancy in the Congress for they are responsible for promoting such a culture in the grand old party. "His talk on sycophancy is like devil quoting scriptures," on of the leaders said.

In fact, Rajasthan chief minister and a contemporary of Azad called him a known sycophant of Sanjay Gandhi.

Perhaps this transformation, according to many Congressis, happened after he was denied a re-nomination to the Rajya Sabha that entailed him to be the Leader of the Opposition with a cabinet rank and a continued stay in a government bungalow in Lutyens Delhi.