With Deora exit, exodus of Rahul Gandhi's band of 'dynasts' nearly complete

NEW DELHI: The departure of Milind Deora from Congress marks a significant chapter in Rahul Gandhi’s political journey, as it nearly completes the exodus of the original band of young “dynasts” who came to be identified with the Gandhi scion during his initial days.

After Jitin Prasada and Jyotiraditya Scindia, Deora is the third of the second-generation Congress leaders who hogged the headlines as Team Rahul during the UPA decade. Another of the coterie member R P N Singh has also joined BJP, like Prasada and Scindia, though he is still awaiting his legislative rehabilitation.

The fourth of the link, Sachin Pilot, is now a CWC member and an AICC office-bearer, who appears in for a long haul in the party after his brief rebellion shook the Congress in Rajasthan three years ago.

Ironically, Deora was only recently appointed the joint treasurer in AICC, which indicated that he had made his peace with his career in drift, unable as he has been to enter Parliament after the precipitous fall of Congress post-2014.

What ties the four departures from Congress is the impression that the young resourceful leaders do not see much of a future in the party, whose fate stays sealed in the Modi era. During this decade, party flame has at best flickered to deceive, like the sense of comeback signalled by the end-year assembly election sweep in 2018, and the massive Karnataka victory after the raucous response to the Bharat Jodo Yatra led by Rahul Gandhi in 2023.

The timing of Deora’s quitting corroborates the general reason behind the exodus. He had been signalling unease for a while now, but had appeared comfortable after the Karnataka victory. But he finally made up his mind after BJP sweep of the Hindi heartland states last month which gutted the hopes that Congress had begun to harbour in 2023 with the wins in Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka, that coincided with the coalescing of an opposition platform to challenge BJP- INDIA bloc.

Congress has dismissed these departures as evidence of “greed” from the GenNext leaders, while Rahul Gandhi reacted to Scindia’s quitting by saying that those who want to leave Congress should be encouraged to go and painted the defectors as scared of fighting the “ideological battle” against RSS. But there has been an acceptance that the steady stream of defections demoralises the workers and hurts the optics.

Deora’s leaving on the day Rahul was to launch the Bharat Jodo Yatra’s sequel from Manipur appeared intended to spoil the frame of Rahul’s Yatra launch. Congress leader Jairam Ramesh accused PM Narendra Modi of orchestrating the timing of Deora’s exit for “headline management”.

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