Political strategist Prashant Kishor has suggested that Rahul Gandhi should consider stepping back if the Congress does not get the desired results in the Lok Sabha polls.
In an interaction with PTI editors, he said Gandhi, for all practical purposes, is running his party and has been unable to either step aside or let somebody else steer the Congress despite his inability to deliver in the last 10 years.
"This according to me is also anti-democratic," said Kishor, who had prepared a revival plan for the opposition party but walked out due to the disagreements between him and its leadership over the execution of his strategy.
"When you are doing the same work for the last 10 years without any success, then there is no harm in taking a break... You should allow someone else to do it for five years. Your mother did it," he said, recalling Sonia Gandhi's decision to keep away from politics following her husband Rajiv Gandhi's assassination and let P V Narasimha Rao take charge in 1991.
A key attribute of good leaders the world over is that they know what they lack and actively look to fill those gaps, he said.
"But it seems to Rahul Gandhi that he knows everything. Nobody can help you if you do not recognise the need for help. He believes he needs someone who can execute what he thinks is right. It is not possible," Kishor said.
Citing Gandhi's decision to resign as the Congress president following the party's drubbing in the 2019 polls, he said the Wayanad MP had then written that he would step back and let somebody else do the job. But, in effect, he has been doing contrary to what he had written, he added.
Many Congress leaders will admit privately that they cannot take any decision in the party, even about a single seat or seat sharing with alliance partners "unless they get the approval from xyz," he said, referring to their need to defer to Rahul Gandhi.
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