Jul 01, 2026 13:24 pm IST

Opinion | The Rise Of The 'Outsider': Is Rahul Gandhi Giving Up On His Own Colleagues?

The rise of Rajendra Pal Gautam says a lot about this new doctrine.

Rasheed Kidwai Rasheed Kidwai Columnist

Rasheed Kidwai Columnist

In every phase of Rahul Gandhi's politics, there has been one recurring complaint from within the Congress: he is more comfortable with outsiders than with Congressmen.

The word "outsider" here does not always mean a person who joined the party yesterday. Sometimes it means someone outside the traditional state-unit hierarchy. Sometimes it means a technocrat, activist, ex-bureaucrat, professional, NGO-minded political worker, or private aide, who did not rise through the familiar Congress route of district committee, Youth Congress, PCC, AICC, factional loyalty, and electoral apprenticeship. At other times, it simply means someone who has Rahul's trust but not the wider party's respect.

The latest example is Rajendra Pal Gautam.

The Congress has appointed the former Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader and Dalit activist as AICC in-charge of poll-bound Uttar Pradesh. He replaces Avinash Pandey. Gautam is also head of the Congress's Scheduled Castes department and is seen in party circles as part of Rahul Gandhi's renewed social justice push. But the choice has left many Congress leaders stunned.

Uttar Pradesh is not an ordinary state for the Congress. It is where the party was born as a national force, where the Nehru-Gandhi family's politics acquired mass legitimacy, and where its decline has been most humiliating. In 2019, when Priyanka Gandhi entered formal party office as AICC general secretary, she was placed in charge of eastern Uttar Pradesh while Jyotiraditya Scindia handled the western region. Seven years later, the party's point man for the state is Rajendra Pal Gautam, a recent entrant from AAP, not a full-fledged AICC general secretary or a Congress Working Committee heavyweight.

This is not merely an appointment. It is a message. Rahul is saying that the old Congress structure has no automatic claim over the future. He is also........

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