“My resignation is permanently with Sonia Gandhi. When the Congress decides to change the Chief Minister, no one will get a hint,” a visibly annoyed Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot had said in April 2022 when the media was speculating about a change of guard in favour of the much younger Sachin Pilot (45) ahead of the 2023 Assembly election. (Gehlot was then 71.) But the election was fought very much under Gehlot’s leadership and the party lost.

In December 2023, after the Congress lost the Madhya Pradesh Assembly as well, media reports claimed that Kamal Nath had been asked to resign as State Congress chief. Within days, party leaders denied this as mere speculation. Kamal Nath (77) resigned later, and the Congress handed over charge to the much younger Jitu Patwari (50) ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha election, but it was too late. The BJP swept all 29 seats.

This year saw the BJP scoring a third term in Haryana despite strong anti-incumbency winds. The Congress face in the State was Bhupinder Singh Hooda, 77.

And, even though many party leaders and workers believe the Congress lost Haryana mainly because Hooda failed to take other leaders on board, he is now a strong contender for the post of Leader of the Congress Legislature Party, who will be the Leader of the Opposition in the Haryana Assembly.

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Rasheed Kidwai, author and political commentator, told Frontline: “Just as Rahul Gandhi began to taste success, veterans and old guards, considered to be politicians with proven track records, have been faltering. Both Rahul Gandhi and party chief Mallikarjun Kharge are bewildered. Nothing seems to be working for them. Rahul Gandhi can’t comprehend why Kamal Nath, Ashok Gehlot, and Bhupinder Singh Hooda failed to deliver when everything looked promising.”

Challenge before party

The biggest challenge before the Congress today is whether it should go in for a generational change at the State level. Unlike the BJP, which has successfully changed State leaders and even replaced incumbent Chief Ministers with ease, the Congress has found it difficult to replace its ageing regional satraps, who have a vice-like grip on the State party apparatus. And the party has had to pay for it, often heavily.

For instance, in Madhya Pradesh, despite its vaunted decision to implement “one man, one post”, Kamal Nath remained both Chief Minister and State party chief. Jyotiraditya Scindia, who had waited in the wings for years, walked out with 22 legislators in March 2020, and the Congress government fell just 18 months after coming to power in December 2018, having defeated the BJP’s 15-year reign.

In Himachal Pradesh, former Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh forced the party to declare him the chief ministerial face in 2012 and 2017. He won in 2012 but lost in 2017. He died in July 2021 at the age of 87, leaving the party scurrying for a replacement as no second line of leadership could emerge during his time. Virbhadra Singh’s wife Pratibha is the current Himachal Congress chief. She and her son Vikramaditya do not have a cordial relationship with Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu. Virbhadra’s legacy is chasing the party even after his death.

In the case of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Haryana, the Congress leadership is reportedly seriously considering a new set of leaders. Will it go through with the plan? Are the veterans ready to let go and make way for the next generation?

Satraps still in reckoning

The political commentator Sanjay Jha, a former Congress member and spokesperson, told Frontline: “Despite frequent calls for the forced retirement of politicians after they reach a threshold age, the fact is nothing beats the canniness and resilience of a politician with many defeats and wins under their belt. Experience is everything.” Acknowledging, however, that young hopefuls, more representative of the country’s changing demographics, are demanding greater representation, Jha said that although Gehlot, Kamal Nath, and Hooda face the sunset of their career, it has less to do with age and more to do with hubris, or decisions that boomeranged.

He said: “Take Gehlot. He could have been the Congress president today. Instead, he chose to create a rebellion within his own unit of the Rajasthan party just to torpedo the ambitions of the more deserving Sachin Pilot. Result? Gehlot is in no man’s land and dependent on the high command’s magnanimity to have any relevance in the future.”

Rajasthan’s war of attrition between Gehlot and Pilot has been raging since 2018. Pilot was Rahul Gandhi’s pick to lead the party in January 2014, with the intention of making him the chief ministerial face in 2018. But Gehlot had his way both in 2018 and 2023. Now, with byelections scheduled for seven Assembly seats in November, the party has deputed both leaders as election observers to different regions of Maharashtra, apparently to keep them away from their home State. The party’s poor show in the 2023 Assembly election, particularly in Pilot’s area of influence, was one reason for the defeat, say pollsters.

As for Hooda, Jha said: “He wanted full control of the 2024 election [after the significant gains in 2019] but miscalculated the BJP’s never-say-die approach. Like Kamal Nath’s stunning defeat in Madhya Pradesh in 2023 against all odds, Hooda’s failure has revived a demoralised BJP.”

In the case of Kamal Nath, it was easy for the Congress to replace him as State party chief as he could not save his government mid-term in 2020 and lost the 2023 Assembly election. His son Nakul Nath lost the family seat of Chhindwara in the 2024 Lok Sabha election by over a lakh votes. He had earlier had the strong backing of the party veteran Digvijaya Singh but lost much of it after the exit of Scindia, who had been the cementing factor for their unity, being a rival of both. The current Congress chief Jitu Patwari is believed to be close to Digvijaya Singh.

Will veterans vacate their spot?

So where are these veteran leaders headed? In 2022, when the Congress won three of the four Rajya Sabha seats in Rajasthan, one of the winners, Pramod Tiwari, had claimed that the “magician has worked his magic”, in reference to Gehlot, a trained magician and son of the well-known magician Babu Lakshman Singh Daksh. But after the debacle in 2023, the BJP mocked Gehlot, saying the “magician’s magic has ended”.

But the party’s good show in the 2024 Lok Sabha election, when it won eight seats compared with none in 2019, has brought him back into the race, much to Pilot’s chagrin. Whether Gehlot will be the chief ministerial face in 2028 as well, when he will be 77, is the question the Congress must grapple with.

Gehlot was first spotted by Indira Gandhi but came into prominence under Sanjay Gandhi, who made him the State president of the National Students’ Union of India, the party’s student wing. He went on to become a Union Minister in Indira Gandhi’s Cabinet, his relationship with the family growing stronger under Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi. And, unlike Hooda, Anand Sharma, and Ghulam Nabi Azad, he refused to be part of the rebellious G-23 grouping within the party in August 2020.

When offered the post of Congress president in 2022, he declined, refusing to leave Rajasthan. The current Rajasthan Congress chief, Govind Singh Dotasra, is also close to him. With so much support among party leaders and MLAs, he might not be willing to vacate his spot, and it might be hard for the high command to make him.

Hooda and Haryana

It is a similar story with Hooda, who too has warded off all challenges in his way. As with Pilot, Rahul Gandhi had elevated Ashok Tanwar, a young Dalit leader, by making him the Haryana Congress chief in February 2014. But Tanwar, who had frequent run-ins with Hooda, had to ultimately resign from the party ahead of the 2019 Assembly election.

Hooda forced the party’s hand to declare him the chief ministerial face both in 2019 and 2024, despite having led the party to a crushing defeat in 2014. While the Congress staged some sort of a comeback in the last two elections, winning 31 and 37 seats respectively compared with 25 in 2014, the fact remains that the State has eluded the Congress for the third time in a row. As for Lok Sabha elections, the Congress won 1, 0, and 5 out of 10 seats in 2014, 2019, and 2024 respectively.

This year, Kumari Selja, the most popular Dalit Congress leader in Haryna, was the State Congress chief and considered herself in the running for the top post. She openly said during campaigning that there was nothing wrong in desiring to become Chief Minister, but she was sidelined and overlooked in ticket distribution. The strained relationship between her and Hooda soon became all too obvious. A disappointed Selja’s campaigning remained low-key, and it is seen as a factor behind the Congress’ defeat in the Assembly election this year.

While campaigning, although Hooda repeatedly told voters that this would be his last election, those in the know take it with a pinch of salt. The veterans do not seem likely to clear the path for the next gen leaders.

Congress slow to change

Ajay Gudavarthy, Associate Professor at the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, said that it was not about age or generation but about how the methodology of political mobilisation had changed under the current BJP dispensation. He said: “The old guard in the Congress is unable to catch up. For instance, in Haryana, Hooda can win 30 seats on his own, but beyond that he needs other leaders. He is, in fact, known as a CM of two and a half districts in the Jat belt. The Congress can neither dispense with him nor expand [under him]. When the BJP mobilises and polarises all other castes against Hooda, he is clueless and the Congress high command too does not know how to move forward.”

Also Read | How Congress faltered in Madhya Pradesh despite respectable vote share

The party might have to pay heavily for not changing pace quickly enough. As Gudavarthy said: “The old guard represents the old kind of caste patronage politics,” but electioneering and campaigning have become a very different game now. And Kamal Nath, Gehlot, and Hooda have collectively demonstrated that they are not familiar with the new political idiom—the changing social dynamics, the rise of social media, the 24x7x365 BJP election machine.

Yet in politics, writing epitaphs can quickly backfire. “Trump could be the next President of the US, Kharge is going strong…. It tells you there’s a reason why politicians never retire. But an old man does need to learn new tricks. It is, after all, the survival of the fittest,” said Jha. In other words, new faces or new tricks, the Congress has to get its act together quickly.