While the Congress continues to dither on resolving the Karnataka imbroglio over the leadership issue, party chief Mallikarjun Kharge has stoked a new debate by saying that the High Command would take the final call on this matter.
Kharge is not known for being politically suave or for using the right words to express himself. But no one expected that he would let the cat out of the bag in public by using the expression High Command. If the Congress president is not the High Command, then who else is?
Kharge has been in the saddle as Congress president for over three years now. He is honest enough to keep reminding all and sundry that he got the post more as a gift than on his competence to run and revive the party. It is debatable if Kharge would have been elected at all if he was not perceived as the candidate of the Gandhi family in his fight against Shashi Tharoor for the top post. A seasoned politician that Kharge is, he has not forgotten the key fact that the Gandhis failed to maintain neutrality, which tilted the balance in his favour. The use of High Command was thus a natural expression of being obliged to the Gandhis for the gift of his life.
Kharge is probably the first remote-controlled Congress president in the post-Indira Gandhi era. His limited organisational abilities were visible in his failures to resolve similar leadership issues in the past, whether in Assam, Punjab or Rajasthan. He was sent as a firefighter but failed to douse the fire, leading to the party’s defeat in all three states. His track record after being at the helm of the party is far from impressive. Since 2023, the Congress has failed in elections held in 16 states, including being voted out of power in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. The party won only in three states, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka and Telangana, while its allies emerged victorious in Jharkhand and Jammu and Kashmir. To top it all, the party faltered yet again in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and failed to reach the three-figure mark.
The party did not give Kharge credit for victories in the three states or blame him either for the failures. Credit for victories always goes to the Gandhis, and failures are blamed on the electronic voting machines or the Election Commission.
For sure, it was not Kharge who had promised the chief minister’s post to DK Shivakumar after two and a half years in Karnataka. The idea of rotation in the chief minister’s post had the clear stamp of Rahul Gandhi, who has also done this in the past and then failed to honour his word, causing turmoil in the party.
All said and done, Kharge is a mere rubber stamp, expected to sign along the dotted line on decisions taken by the Gandhis, especially Rahul Gandhi, something he has been doing for long and rather abashedly. Some of these decisions defied logic, like the decision to contest as a junior partner of the Left Front in West Bengal in 2021 that failed miserably as the alliance drew a blank. On the contrary, it harmed the Congress-led UDF in Kerala, which went to the polls simultaneously, as in one state they were together and in the other they were fighting against each other. A similar disastrous decision was to align with the Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. It directly impacted the 2025 Delhi Assembly elections, with the Congress failing to win even a single seat for the third consecutive election when AAP parted ways with it. If Kharge had no role to play in the West Bengal alliance, the decision to align with AAP was taken with Kharge as Congress president.
The question remains: what is the exact role of Kharge in the party if all decisions are taken by the Gandhi family, especially Rahul Gandhi? The Congress has tried to undo the damage by releasing some videos of the close relationship between Kharge and Rahul Gandhi and terming it a relationship between a father and a son. If that is true, there is no denying that the son is treading on the toes of the father by taking decisions on his behalf.
The real test for the Congress under Kharge will come in the first half of 2026 when five states, Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Puducherry, go to polls. The focus will be on Assam and Kerala, where it will theoretically have a chance to come to power. In Tamil Nadu, it is an inconsequential junior partner of the ruling DMK, and its survival will be at stake without the DMK. Likewise, in West Bengal also it will be struggling for survival.
The upcoming elections will give Kharge an opportunity to come out of the shadows of Rahul Gandhi and demonstrate that, as the elected president, he is supposed to be the High Command of the Congress. But he can do this only if he wishes to do so, which is unlikely, as he remains heavily indebted to the Gandhi family.
Ajay Jha is a senior journalist, author and political commentator.
