In desolate Congress district offices in Gujarat, revamp plan stirs hope against hope
On the wall of the District Congress Committee (DCC) office in Sabarkantha, a white patch stands out amidst a gallery of portraits of party stalwarts and national leaders, including former state chiefs such as Bharatsinh Solanki and Jagdish Thakor, and the current one, Shaktisinh Gohil.
The white patch is where a portrait once hung of Arjun Modhwadia. In 2024, the former Gujarat state chief who was among the 17 Congress leaders who won the Assembly elections in 2022 in the party's worst-ever tally in the state defected to the BJP, along with three others.
'Who could even imagine that a senior Congress leader like Arjun Modhwadia would join the BJP, against which he had been vocal throughout his political career?' says Mahendrasinh Thakor, 58, the Himmatnagar city Congress president, who incidentally thought up the idea of putting portraits of leaders on walls in order to 'make it look like a Congress office'.
At the recent AICC Session held in Gujarat, the state hosting it for the first time in about 60 years, district units were identified as key building blocks to build the Congress back up. While this is a nationwide project, the Congress launched the pilot from Gujarat, a state where the party has been out of power now for 30 years and which is identified most closely with the BJP's rise post-Modi.
On April 16, Rahul Gandhi was present for the launch of the drive, 'Sangathan Srujan Abhiyan (Campaign to Recreate Organisation)', at the Aravalli district neighbouring Sabarkantha.
The path for defeating the BJP and RSS goes through Gujarat, said the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, promising empowerment of and accountability in DCCs, including performance assessment.
A view from the ground, from two DCCs, in one of which there is a Congress MLA, and another where the Congress leader elected in 2022 has moved to the BJP:
Sabarkantha DCC office
Built in 1960, the office is now hard to spot in the middle of a busy market located along a railway line. The complex in which the DCC office is situated once also held the revenue and collector office. Now there are a myriad small shops on the ground floor, while fading markings indicate the Congress office located on the floor above.
Mukesh Patel, 60 and a Seva Dal member, is currently the only employee at the Sabarkantha DCC office, as the office in-charge. That means unlocking the office every day at 10 am and downing the shutters at 6 in the evening, apart from attending to visitors and receiving and distributing correspondence.
Sardar Bhawan, the Sabarkantha District Congress Office in Himmatnagar.
Says Mukesh: 'Till 2012-13, more than 30 persons would be in office every day, discussing party work. This is the same place where the Khareed-Vechan Sangh (cooperatives for buying and selling of agricultural produce) and the Sabarkantha dairy were born, with Patidar farmers holding meetings here and brainstorming.'
Then, around 2018, the Congress DCC office closed, and would not open till last year, when Ashokbhai Patel took over as the district president, 'got the five rooms cleaned and made the office functional again', says Mukesh. Ashokbhai sits regularly in his office now, while attendance records of party leaders are diligently maintained.
If Rahul Gandhi's other assertion at the DCC revamp launch was that the party should sideline party leaders who are 'mixed up with the BJP', this is hard to digest for the Sabarkantha Congress, where the absence of Modhwadia hangs heavy.
Till the 2012 Assembly elections, the Congress was a potent political power in Sabarkantha, winning six of its seven seats – three of them reserved. Both in 2017, by which time Sabarkantha had only four Assembly seats, with the Aravalli district carved out of it, and in 2022, the Congress could win just one seat in Sabarkantha.
'There is a lot of pressure on Congress workers from the BJP. In the last 10 years, more than 150 Congressmen from Sabarkantha have joined the BJP, while 50 have done so from Himmatnagar,' says Ashokbhai, giving examples of several top names who have left the party, including V D Zala, who was elected as Himmatnagar MLA in 2022.
On Gandhi's promise that a district president who performs well would become a minister if the Congress came to power, Ashokbhai says that is not much of a lure – at least for him. Having lost the only election he ever contested, to a taluka panchayat post in 2015, he says: 'I want to work for the organisation. I have this junoon (obsession) to bring the party back to power in Sabarkantha district.'
But he understands the 'difficulties' of being a Congressman in a state where the party is facing the threat of becoming irrelevant. 'In 2012, during (then chief minister) Narendra Modi 's Sadbhavana Yatra, I let a party event be held on my land on the same day as Modi's, across the road from it. In 2013, my building complex worth Rs 2 crore was pulled down.' Later, he constructed a building on the same place again, and named it Ashok Vatika.
As part of the DCC revamp, a team of observers led by AICC general secretary Prakash Joshi met workers along with existing office-bearers in the last week of April. After a second meeting, they will submit a list of six names for the post of district president to the high command by the May 10 deadline. Sources said that the committee held one-to-one meetings with nearly 250 workers.
One of the workers said: 'We were asked for feedback on Ashokbhai and his working, if we wanted to suggest any new name, and were told to share any suggestions or concerns.'
On the push to revamp DCCs, Ashokbhai says: 'Nothing is impossible. If this pilot project continues for six months with committed persons at the district level, in addition to 10-15 PCC leaders, the results would be visible.'
In Gujarat's capital city, which hosted the AICC Session, the DCC office is in a similar state of lassitude.
In the narrow lanes of Lal Darwaja area, on the first floor of 'Sewa Sadan Bhawan', an office secretary, office assistant and a computer operator make up the DCC staff. In the Congress's golden era, its titan Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel practised law from an office nearby while its old headquarters were located a few metres away.
Sewa Sadan Bhawan, the Ahmedabad City Congress Office in Ahmedabad's old city area of Lal Darwaja.
Till 2016, the Congress's DCC office functioned from a two-bedroom flat in Khanpur area, its address for nearly 30-35 years. In the current building, there is a UCO bank outlet on the ground floor, while the second and third floors are rented out to the GST office of the East Ahmedabad division.
From here, party workers address issues of the Assembly seat, city as well as corporation, apart from planning events and elections.
Of the 16 Assembly seats which fall in the Ahmedabad City DCC, the Congress won two while 14 went to the BJP in the 2012 Assembly elections. This increased to four in 2017 but again fell to two in 2022. Unlike in Sabarkantha, both MLAs have stuck on with the Congress here.
One of the measures of the Congress decline, joke party workers, is the amount the party spends on tea for visitors. Pravinbhai Parmar (66), the office secretary who has seen nine Ahmedabad City DCC presidents come and go, says: 'Chimanbhai Patel was the last Chief Minister who would visit the city office (back in 1973), while ministers would regularly come. But the Congress has not been in power for so long. Satta ki baat hi alag hoti hai (Being in power is a different thing altogether). While earlier our tea-coffee bill ran to Rs 25,000-30,000 a month, today only 10-15 cups get consumed daily. At the Khanpur office, even before the office opened, there would be queues of workers waiting outside.'
Himmatsinh Patel, the president of the Ahmedabad City DCC, asserts: 'The gap of 10% in the voting share (between the party and BJP) can be bridged if we win over the trust of the people.'
Incidentally, Himmatsinh was one of those who found himself at the receiving end after Gandhi hit out at 'BJP sympathisers'. Speaking to The Indian Express, Himmatsinh, who won the MLA elections from Bapunagar in 2017, had denied this.
Sewa Sadan Bhawan, the Ahmedabad City Congress Office in Ahmedabad's old city area of Lal Darwaja.
Gujarat Congress chief Shaktisinh Gohil says what the DCC revamp exercise has done is send out 'a sense of being heard' among workers, with party bosses focusing their attention on Gujarat. 'Along with DCC presidents, the process is also assessing names for other responsibilities. We will tackle our weaknesses and emerge stronger.'
Prakash Parmar, 45, an assistant at the Ahmedabad City DCC office, hangs on too to that hope, pointing out that despite being out of power in Ahmedabad for decades now, there are Congress workers in every ward of the city.
The problem, he adds, lies elsewhere. 'The party has workers, but the issue is at the leadership level. The direction is missing.'
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