THE OPEN rebellion of Satyajeet Tambe for the election of the graduate’s constituency of Nashik has once again brought to light what some senior Congress leaders said was the weak “ideological link” young leaders who are considered close to former party president Rahul Gandhi exhibit. Satyajeet Tambe, once the president of Maharashtra Youth Congress, was considered the blue-eyed boy of Gandhi, much like leaders such as Jyotiraditya Scindia and others, who left the Grand Old Party to join the BJP over the last few years.
Last week, Satyajeet Tambe decided to file his nomination as an independent candidate despite the party offering the candidature to his father, the sitting MLC Dr Sudhir Tambe. What got the political grapevine particularly buzzing was the fact that Sudhir Tambe is a close relative of former minister and senior Congress leader Balasaheb Thorat. Junior Tambe was honed as a possible successor to Thorat and was always seen by the latter’s side in the political arena.
Satyajeet Tambe became the Youth Congress president in 2018 following an election he won against sitting MLA Amit Zanak and Kunal Nitin Raut.
What makes Satyajeet Tambe’s rebellion significant is the close relation both his family and Thorat’s family shared with the Gandhis. During the 2019 election campaign, Gandhi was forced to make an unscheduled halt in Sangamner due to a technical snag in his helicopter. Satyajeet Tambe had taken to social media to write about his experience of the then Congress president’s stay and went on to add how the humility of the leader had taken them by surprise. Satyajeet Tambe’s social media handle had gone in detail about how the Gandhi scion had “relished simple Maharashtrian food and charmed all by his simplicity”.
A senior Congress leader remarked: “If one considers the events, the trend is clear. Young leaders who were handpicked by Gandhi chose their career over the party or its ideology when the time came. We saw this happening with Jyotiraditya Scindia in Madhya Pradesh and also in the form of Sachin Pilot in Rajasthan.”
While Scindia went on to join the BJP which led to the collapse of the Kamal Nath government in Madhya Pradesh in 2020, an uneasy truce seems to exist in Rajasthan between Pilot and the present Chief Minister, Ashok Gehlot.
In case of Satyajeet Tambe, his connections with Thorat, a trusted lieutenant of the Gandhis, makes his rebellion more worrisome. Thorat is one of the few leaders who had stayed with the party in 2019 when it was hit by large-scale defections. He was rewarded with the post of the Congress legislature party leader along with a minister’s post when the Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government came to power that year. More recently, Satyajeet Tambe and Thorat were given charge of the Maharashtra leg of Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra.
While the party has taken action against his father Sudhir Tambe, the young leader continues to insist that he has not left the party. However, senior leaders say the open war between the younger and older generation about how to run the party is another sign of what ails the Congress.
