It is not routine for modern-day politicians to challenge their high commands. But this week was different, as a tale of two rebellions unfolded, one in Punjab where a former chief minister led the resistance to Congress decisions about state unit structure ahead of 2027 polls and the other in Madhya Pradesh where a former minister made a very public show of anger after being denied the BJP nomination for an assembly bypoll.
Though the stories played out in different parts of the country, these were bound by a common thread. Both signalled a challenge to Congress and the BJP high commands and their official calls in respect of election strategies.
For the Congress high command led de facto by Rahul Gandhi, former Punjab CM Charanjit Singh Channi's open defiance to the decision of retaining Amrinder Raja Warring as state chief remains hard to grasp and harder to reconcile.
Congress insiders admit this is the first time any state leader has revolted publicly after a decision has been made and communicated (in respect of the Punjab Congress election team in this case).
A similar script emerged in Madhya Pradesh where the former powerful state home minister Narottam Mishra was denied a BJP ticket for the July 30 assembly bypoll from Datia which he lost to a Congress candidate in 2023.
The BJP leadership instead fielded a new young candidate Ashutosh Tiwari, leaving the former three time MLA Mishra in a sulk. The reason given was -- the BJP is in for a generational shift under its youngest ever national president Nitin Nabin and elders must make way for newcomers.
In both the cases where regional veterans questioned a lack of democratic decision making within their parties, the respective high commands signalled they won't budge.
Bhupesh Baghel, Congress general secretary in charge of Punjab speaking on behalf of Rahul Gandhi clarified that leadership decisions were no child's play, and hinted that the high command was not game for making changes of any sort under public pressure.
In Madhya Pradesh, Mishra, who once proclaimed that Datia existed because he did, was summoned to Bhopal and later to Delhi and told, in no uncertain terms, that he should immediately tame his angry supporters who were creating a ruckus on the roads.
Mishra was reminded of the organisational Lakshaman Rekha and told that the nomination for the bypoll won't be reconsidered.
Mishra fell in line on Sunday and said he would attend Tiwari’s nomination.
Be that as it may, party insiders on both ends of the spectrum saw the two acts of resistance as unprecedented and uncharacteristic.
In the BJP, the element of surprise over Mishra's public show of displeasure with Tiwari's nomination ran much deeper than in the Congress.
This, on account of the famed saffron internal party discipline culture where everyone normally abides once top leaders have spoken.
But this week saw a build up of unease not just in the Mishra camp in BJP Madhya Pradesh but within other sections of the Sangh parivar over alleged theft of offerings at Lord Ram Temple in Ayodhya.
In what many saw as surprising, BJP Uttar Pradesh strongman and former Lok Sabha MP Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh expressed open anxiety over the Mandir donation row by visiting the Hanumangarhi temple at Ayodhya but skipping the Ram Mandir.
In Congress too, internal dissent has been building up for a while and beginning to settle on the surface now. This friction recently forced Rahul Gandhi to accept popular leader VD Satheesan as Kerala Chief Minister over his aide KC Venugopal.
While high commands across political parties assert their dominance as they will, in an attempt at political sustenance and discipline, these latest developments point to a growing disquiet over the progressive decline of intra party democracy, with rank and file finding it hard to speak their mind freely and without the fear of retribution of some kind.
Maybe not everyone but some people are still speaking. Congress leader and former minister Shashi Tharoor is one of them.
An aggressive votary of articulating independent thought on polity and policy of our times , Tharoor has often found himself on the wrong side of the Congress high command. And yet that hasn’t deterred him from arguing that substantive debates within political outfits and merit-based leadership deserve attention. The only problem is — no one is listening.