Factionalism in Rajasthan Congress has left the party vice-president Rahul Gandhi worried, as the leader got an extensive survey done in the poll-bound state to identify rival factions in each of its 200 constituencies.
Party sources said Rahul was personally scrutinising political developments in every assembly area based on the survey conducted by members of his core team independent of the Congress organisation. The survey team was instructed to fathom how deep the state Congressmen were divided in their loyalties towards former Union minister C P Joshi and chief minister Ashok Gehlot, said sources. The team also examined how many other factions of the party leaders existed in the state. Moreover, the survey team focused on finding how the state’s minority and Dalit voters were inclined.
The Congress high command has been viewing the imminent Rajasthan assembly elections as significant in the run-up to the 2014 general elections. The two elections would be barely six months apart. Rajasthan, which has 25 Lok Sabha seats, has had a tradition of voting for the party that leads in the assembly elections. The desert state assumed greater importance for the Congress after the party lost its traditional bastions like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat.
Internal strife in the Rajasthan Congress had been surfacing in the public for past at least two years, but at the recent feedback meetings held by the state’s AICC general secretary in-charge Gurudas Kamat, the dissenting voices got shriller. Party leaders spared neither Gehlot nor his ministers. The resentment was limited not just to the lower rung Congressmen. Leaders like Joshi and cabinet minister Bharat Singh too talked of the increasing factionalism here.
“It is these open fights right before the assembly elections that appear to have jolted the party high command. Rahul is trying hard to timely weed out the internal strife. That is why at the last month’s meeting with Gehlot and Chandrabhan he emphasised on the unity aspect,” said a senior Congress leader.
Sources said the survey commissioned by Rahul micro-scrutinized each constituency in finding out how many Congress groups existed there and to whom were the local leaders associated with at the state level. The survey also examined which local leader had better chances of winning the seat based on the caste/religion composition vis-a-vis the probable candidates of the rival party, mainly BJP. The core team was also asked to indentify the local issues of each of the constituency, said sources.
src: http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-08-10/india/41265479_1_rajasthan-congress-assembly-elections-survey