New Delhi:

Political strategist Prashant Kishore suggested that Rahul Gandhi should consider quitting if the Congress does not get the expected results in the Lok Sabha polls.

In an interaction with PTI editors, he said that for all practical purposes, Mr Gandhi was running his party and despite his inability to deliver on his promises in the past 10 years, he could not abdicate or let anyone else lead the Congress.

“In my opinion, it’s also anti-democratic,” Mr. Kishore said. He had prepared a revival plan for the opposition but withdrew due to differences between him and the opposition leadership over the implementation of its strategy.

“When you have been doing the same job for the past ten years without any success, then there is no harm in taking a break… You should allow someone else to do it for five years. Your mother did that,” he said, recalling Sonia ·Sonia Gandhi decided to stay away from politics after the assassination of her husband Rajiv Gandhi and brought PV Narasimha Rao to power in 1991.

He said a key attribute of good leaders around the world is that they know what they lack and actively seek to fill those gaps.

“But in Rahul Gandhi’s mind, he knows everything. If you don’t recognize the need for help, no one can help you. He believed he needed someone who could execute what he thought was right. That was not possible. ,” Mr. Kishore said.

Citing Mr Gandhi’s decision to step down as Congress president after the party’s crushing defeat in the 2019 polls, he said the Wayanad MP later wrote that he would step aside and let others do the work. this work. But he added that, in fact, he was doing the opposite of what he wrote.

He said many Congress leaders would privately admit that they could not take any decision within the party, even for a seat or sharing a seat with an alliance partner, “unless they get xyz’s approval”, referring to their need to defer to Opinions of Hul Gandhi.

However, some Congress leaders have also said privately that the opposite is actually the case and that Rahul Gandhi has not taken the decision that they hoped he would.

Kishore said the Congress party and its supporters were more important than any one individual and Mr Gandhi should not stubbornly believe that it was he who had to contribute to the party despite repeated failures.

The former Congress president claimed that his party has been facing poll setbacks due to damage to institutions such as the Election Commission, judiciary and media, which he said may be partly true but not entirely.

He pointed out that in the 2014 polls when the Congress came to power, the number of seats fell from 206 to 44, while the BJP’s influence on various institutions was minimal.

However, the ace strategist linked to several major parties’ successful poll campaigns stressed that the main opposition party had “structural” flaws in its operations and that addressing them was crucial to its success.

He said the Congress party’s vote share, Lok Sabha and Assembly seats have been declining since 1984 and this has nothing to do with individuals.

Asked what he thought about the suggestion that the party was in terminal decline, Mr Kishore dismissed the suggestion, saying those who said so did not understand the country’s politics. He said such assertions were nothing more than political talk.

“The Congress should not be seen as just a political party. The space it represents in the country can never be terminated. That is not possible. The Congress has evolved and reincarnated many times in its history,” he said.

The last time this was done was when Sonia Gandhi took over and plotted her return to power in the 2004 polls, he added.

Asked what went wrong after he was roped in by the party for the revival plan, he said Congress wanted to set up an empowered action group (not its constitutional body) to implement his plan, but he did not agree to the proposal.

He said how the EAG could reform its constitutional bodies such as the Parliamentary Working Committee. He added that it was like the PA’s office was working on a plan to reform the functions of the presidency.

He noted that Congress did create the EAG though, and asked if anyone knew what it did.

Mr Kishore ruled out the Aam Aadmi Party, which after achieving varying success in different states, has emerged as a national party, taking seats in the Congress and replicating Delhi in other states model.

“The possibility does not exist. I think its weakness is that it has no ideological or institutional roots,” he said.

Asked about the BJP’s accusation of “family rule” against the Congress and several regional parties, he admitted that the issue was indeed on people’s radar.

In the post-independence era, being a leader because of his surname might have been an advantage, but now it is a liability, he said.

“Be it Rahul Gandhi, Akhilesh Yadav or Tejashvi Yadav. Their respective parties may have accepted them as leaders but the people have not. Akhilesh Yadav Will Duff be able to lead the Samajwadi Party to victory,” he asked.

However, he added that the BJP did not have to deal with the issue as they had only recently come to power and would now be under pressure to offer jobs to family members of their leaders.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)