Rahul's Congress: An Empty Bench

‘Team Rahul Gandhi’, the band of young leaders touted as the Congress scion’s able lieutenants, lies in disarray. Several of them have quit the party, others sulk openly week

- Kaushik Deka

A week after the Congress’s humiliating defeat in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, one of the party’s young Turks who also happened to have been a minister in both regimes of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), told India today: “Now Pappu will understand what it means to be in politics. It’s not easy surviving in the Opposition camp.” Pappu, of course, is a derogatory reference to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, popularised in social media by his detractors.

The comment was later withheld at the leader’s request, but it was one of the first indicators of disgruntlement among the younger lot who had come to the fore after Rahul joined politics in 2004. While the Gandhi scion has ‘survived’—even helmed the party at one point despite the multiple electoral debacles since that disastrous summer of 2014—several leaders of his generation, including the minister who had made the aforementioned comment, have deserted Rahul and the party.

On January 25, R.P.N Singh became only the latest member of ‘Team Rahul’ to desert the Congress ship. This ambitious coterie took shape in July 2003 at a three-day chintan shivir (brainstorming session) of the Congress in Shimla. At the