Inside Congress’s reluctance to embrace CJP | Powertrip #157

Welcome to this week’s Powertrip, a political newsletter curated exclusively for subscribers of The News Minute and Newslaundry. This week’s edition is by Pooja Prasanna.In this week’s edition, we spoke to party insiders to understand the Congress’s concerns with the CJP movement and why the party is wary of endorsing it.Powertrip is a newsletter that senior political reporters of TNM put together every week. For those who can’t access the full newsletter, get a subscription and read every Tuesday. .Why Congress has kept CJP at arm’s lengthWhy has the Congress party hesitated to openly back the CJP movement? Why didn’t Rahul Gandhi make a statement on Sonam Wangchuk for days? These are questions that many have asked in the past few days. What we can tell you is that the decision was rooted in both caution and hostility. For the Congress, from the outset there were several unanswered questions.One of the earliest concerns within the Congress was the perception that sections of the CJP, including its founder Abhijeet Dipke, appeared politically closer to the AAP ecosystem. Dipke and other leaders’ past comments on Congress and their proximity to AAP is what made Congress really wary of supporting them.Rahul Gandhi’s inner circle has a few members who are especially wary of the AAP.They think that the India Against Corruption movement that gave birth to AAP and marked the end of Congress’s dominance has been a lesson for the party to be careful while engaging with movements.For the Congress, AAP poses a serious threat in many states, including Punjab, which will see elections in a few months from now.Yet, according to party insiders, there was also a sense that the movement wanted the political legitimacy and national heft that an association with Congress could bring. “For a party that has, over the decades, seen allies, activists, and regional forces rise with its support only to later chart their own course, there was little appetite for a leap of faith,” a Congress leader said.One leader said that what the CJP expected was for Rahul to go to CJP’s stage and endorse Dipke, which was unacceptable to the party. That caution was reinforced by a more fundamental question: what exactly did CJP stand for?Congress leaders privately admit that they were never entirely certain about the movement’s ideological moorings. While CJP spoke the language of constitutionalism and democratic rights, there were doubts within Congress on whether those commitments would hold under political pressure.There were also questions about the movement’s organisational maturity and whether it was equipped to deal with the scale and complexity of the political battle it had entered. Some even wondered about its origins and whether elements of the broader Sangh ecosystem had played a role, directly or indirectly, in shaping its trajectory.As the country’s principal opposition party, Congress viewed the risks differently from civil society groups or individual activists. Backing a new movement is not merely an expression of solidarity. It is also a political investment. What if the movement later found common ground with the BJP on key issues? What if its ideological compass shifted over time? For many in the party, the answer was simple: wait and watch. There was another question that repeatedly surfaced in internal discussions: what was genuinely new about the politics CJP was advancing?Rahul Gandhi was reportedly advised to keep his own movement demanding the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan and a rehaul of the education system. “Rahul has been asking the same questions in a sustained manner for far longer than the CJP. Why should he merge that with a new movement?” a Congress leader asked.The movement’s growing popularity, therefore, did not automatically translate into a compelling reason for the party to attach itself to it.CJP represented a different kind of phenomenon, a new political formation capable of generating headlines, social media traction, and public curiosity. The question confronting Congress was whether every movement that captured the public imagination deserved political endorsement, or whether credibility and consistency had to be tested over time.The distinction became evident when comparisons were drawn with Sonam Wangchuk. During one internal discussion, Sonia Gandhi is said to have brought up Wangchuk’s campaign, following which KC Venugopal expressed support publicly. But several leaders insisted that the comparison only went so far. In their view, Wangchuk’s issue-based mobilisation and CJP’s broader ambitions belonged to different categories and required different responses. 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