Two months after he had said in a media interview that the family should step aside — and that Rahul Gandhi took all decisions without being party chief — Kapil Sibal chose to eye a Rajya Sabha berth with the support of the Samajwadi Party without formally joining it.

Sibal’s exit comes days after Hardik Patel, who hasn’t yet joined a party but is tipped to join the BJP, and Sunil Jakhar, who has joined the BJP.

Ironically, neither the party leadership nor Sibal himself announced for nine long days that the former Union minister had parted ways with the party, begging the question as to whether the top leadership of the party, the Nehru-Gandhi family, made any effort at all to retain him.

Rahul Factor

The turn of events isn’t just another shock for the Congress; it once again brings the spotlight on what is now widely seen as Rahul Gandhi’s failure to keep his flock together.

Indeed, with each exit, Rahul Gandhi’s perception as a potential leader falls several notches, as most who have quit have attacked him directly or obliquely, reinforcing the image that the BJP first bestowed on him: an “incompetent” dynast who sees politics as a part-time job and has bad advisors.

Those who exit the party — like Hardik Patel in Gujarat — employ these same tropes used by the BJP and other parties to run down the Congress by attacking Rahul Gandhi and reinforcing the image of a “non-serious politician” that has stuck to him for years now.

Hardik Patel did not just leave the party. He made direct accusations that were oblique attacks on Gandhi and aimed at endorsing the charge that he isn’t serious about politics. Patel said that the state leaders of the Congress were more interested in providing “chicken sandwiches” to the visiting central leadership. He also accused the leadership of being occupied with their mobile phones rather than strategising to get the party out of the cesspool it is electorally and organisationally caught in. He also said that when the leadership should have been in India, it was found abroad.

All the attacks — as has been widely interpreted in the media — were obliquely on Rahul Gandhi.

The implication: a charge that was labelled by the BJP on Gandhi for years — and which made his name a negative brand with repetition — has now caught on to the extent that every leader leaving a sinking Congress — or even expressing dissent — repeats the charge, obliquely or directly, and deepens the negative popular perception around the Congress leader.

The image of the Congress also falls as the image of Gandhi sinks further. For, the party has insisted on seeing him as its face despite setbacks and has never made a sincere effort to bring to the forefront a person with a better image than Gandhi.

The downward spiral, thus, seems difficult to contain and further setbacks seem imminent.

While Sunil Jakhar, who quit the Congress to join the BJP, was less scathing, he also said on record that Rahul Gandhi has advisers who had no clue about Punjab. He also advised the leader to do away with “sycophants” surrounding him — thus making Gandhi appear to be gullible rather than being an astute political mind.

'Sab ki Congress' vs 'ghar ki Congress'

While Sibal chose not to comment on the Congress after his resignation went public, he had some time back accused the party high command of living in “cuckoo land”. Reinforcing the common insinuation that the party is run by a family and not on modern lines, Sibal had said that while he wants “sab ki Congress” (Congress for all), some want “ghar ki Congress” (Congress of a family).

The list of insider attacks seems unending now.

Two years back, when Jyotiraditya Scindia quit the Congress to join the BJP, the media reported Pradyot Debbarma, former Tripura royal, and cousin of Scindia, as saying that the leader had tried to meet Rahul Gandhi for several months and could not secure an appointment.

Much earlier, it was widely said that when Himanta Biswa Sarma, then in the Congress and disgruntled, went to meet Rahul Gandhi for a resolution, the Congress leader did not give him a serious hearing.

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The Congress’ precipitous electoral fall in the last seven years is directly connected to the negative brand that Rahul Gandhi has acquired, even if Congress leaders and some intellectuals, who see in Gandhi as the most intrepid fighter against the BJP, refuse to see this.

The image has become so widespread that it has been turned into a formula to attack the Congress, be it by the BJP, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) — Kejriwal had said in 2016 that Prime Minister Modi should remember that he was no Rahul Gandhi — or by those quitting the Congress as it goes into a free fall.

The impact is best visible when one sees that in states having a direct Congress-vs-BJP fight, the BJP does much better in Lok Sabha polls, where it is popularly seen as a Modi-Gandhi battle, than in assembly polls.

It may be too late to resurrect the image, which has acquired the status of mass commonsense. Perhaps the answer lies in democratising the party before it is too late — it may well already be too late — and projecting leaders from outside the family.

—The author Vikas Pathak is a columnist and media educator. The views expressed here are personal.

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(Edited by : Ajay Vaishnav)