As someone who has spent decades observing and reporting on the Congress party, I can say this without hesitation: honesty and Congress politics have never been compatible. The party’s moral compass has always been set, not by principles or performance, but by the only currency it truly values—loyalty to the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. That is how it ruled India for nearly six decades, until Narendra Modi’s arrival disrupted its stranglehold.
Even in the turbulent post-Emergency years, when the Congress seemed vulnerable, the same pattern held. Leaders who defected in 1977—unable to stomach socialist or rightist ideologies—soon trickled back. Why? Because survival in Congress does not depend on ideology, intellect, or capability. It depends on unquestioning fealty to “the family.”
Till 2014, this ensured that even the most incompetent loyalist could be rewarded with power, while genuine talent was stifled. But the BJP’s successive electoral victories changed the political marketplace. Leaders like Jyotiraditya Scindia—popular, articulate, and connected to the people—saw through Rahul Gandhi’s limitations and jumped ship. Others, like Shashi Tharoor and Manish Tewari, grew weary of the party’s anti-Hindu and anti-national posturing under Sonia and Rahul Gandhi, who, unlike Rajiv, have neither the authenticity of being rooted in Indian soil nor the political acumen to inspire the nation.
Congress’s history is littered with the names of leaders who dared to question the dynasty—Sharad Pawar, Mamata Banerjee, Himanta Biswa Sarma—and were shown the door. Some, like Pawar, survived by manipulating regional power equations. Mamata built her fortress in West Bengal. Biswa Sarma, meanwhile, transformed the BJP’s fortunes in the Northeast and was rewarded with the Assam Chief Ministership.
Despite humiliating defeats in the north, east, and west, the dynasts have clung to their delusions of invincibility. Yes, the party has managed recent wins in Himachal, Karnataka, and Telangana—but largely through impossible, fiscally reckless electoral promises. And yet, the leadership still expects every Congress worker, Chief Minister, and even its “Dalit card” national president to prostrate before them.
It’s not just ideological opponents who are targeted. Senior leaders like Ghulam Nabi Azad, Kapil Sibal, and Abhishek Manu Singhvi—some of them brilliant legal minds—have either exited quietly or compromised themselves by defending the dynasty in court, even as the family faces a litany of criminal allegations.
And now comes the latest casualty: K.N. Rajanna, Karnataka’s Cooperation Minister and a close aide of Chief Minister Siddaramaiah. Rajanna’s “crime”? Speaking the truth. In the ongoing controversy over “fake voters” allegedly planted to help the BJP, Rajanna asked the obvious: if Congress was in power during the electoral roll revisions, why didn’t its leaders raise objections then? His point was simple—blaming the Election Commission now is political theatre.
For this dose of inconvenient truth, Rajanna was promptly sacked—an act that not only silenced a voice of reason but also publicly humiliated Siddaramaiah. The message from the dynasty could not be clearer: no one, not even a Chief Minister, is safe from retribution if a loyalist steps out of line.
Is this the beginning of the end for Siddaramaiah himself? Will he accept his deputy D.K. Shivakumar’s growing threat to split the party after the elections if he isn’t handed power? Or will Siddaramaiah fight back, perhaps even contemplating his own rebellion?
One thing is certain: in today’s Congress, the price of truth is political execution. And as Rajanna has just learned, the dynasty does not forgive—and it never forgets.
