How Oligarchy and Favoritism Are Eroding the Congress Grassroots

 The traditional Kannada adage “sikkidavarige seerunde” —implying that sweetmeats are reserved exclusively for the favored few — has never felt more relevant than in the wake of the recent Legislative Council elections in Karnataka. While the ruling Congress party successfully secured five seats, its selection process has exposed a deep, troubling rot within its organizational structure. By completely ignoring regional balance and leaving numerous districts entirely unrepresented, the party leadership has sent a clear message: reward is a function of proximity to power, not service to the people.

This blatant regional disparity is most glaringly obvious in the coastal belt. Dakshina Kannada has emerged as the singularly most favored district in the region, leaving neighboring Udupi and Uttara Kannada entirely out in the cold. Despite already holding three MLC representations in Hariprasad, Ivan D’Souza and Manjunath Bhandari, the party chose to bestow a fourth seat upon journalist-turned-politician P V Mohan.
The underlying connection among these selections, including M A Gafoor’s appointment to the Coastal Development Authority, is their deep-rooted allegiance to the late Oscar Fernandes. Fernandes was undeniably a powerful high-command insider and a permanent fixture in Sonia Gandhi’s inner circle, whose legacy remains shadowed by central probe agency investigations into the National Herald case.

With his loyal proteges systematically occupying key berths in the government, ordinary party workers are left wondering whether the late leader is effectively ruling the state apparatus in absentia. This concentration of power rewards sycophancy over genuine field mobilization, effectively transforming a democratic party into a closed oligarchy. Consequently, dedicated grassroots workers are growing profoundly disillusioned; many are retreating into inactive silence, while others are actively deserting the organization. The Congress is gradually hollowed out, risking a mutation into a party run exclusively by backroom manipulators rather than community leaders.

Additionally, a trend of nominating journalists has emerged, as seen with Shivakumar from Mysore and Mohan from Mangaluru, while prominent AHINDA lobbyists like Dinesh Amin Mattu continue to wait in the wings. Culturally and constitutionally, the Legislative Council was designed to infuse governance with diverse expertise from non-political fields. By reducing these seats to mere tokens for political loyalty and *chamachagiri*, the Congress is discarding foundational democratic norms. If the nation's oldest political party treats institutional intent with such casual disdain, it severely compromises the future of democratic representation.