As leader of your party in either of the two houses of Parliament, one has to nuance the party’s stand on any issue. One cannot have his or her personal opinion.

That is not the case with Manish Tewari. He often takes a contrasting stand from that of his party on different issues.

Though some may say that this is an indication of democracy in the Congress, the larger point is that it also shows confusion in the party on issues.

And who benefits from that is known to all. Take for example, his support for the government’s Agnipath and Agniveer scheme. I am not going into merits and de-merits of the scheme but as a member of a political party, one has to go with the party.

If everybody starts speaking in different tunes, the discipline in the party will go for a toss. Does anyone in the ruling BJP speak against the party or the government? Except a few cryptic tweets by Varun Gandhi, I have seen none.

Tewari has also often spoken about the party’s internal matters in public and the rivals of the Congress have used his remarks to attack it.

Tewari, a former union minister, has been mulling various options since 2014. First, he refused to contest the 2014 Lok Sabha elections from Ludhiana fearing a loss from the constituency. He even got himself admitted to a hospital to avoid contesting the election.

In the 2017 Punjab elections, there was a huge buzz that he will join the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). It is said that AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal’s unwillingness to name him or Navjot Singh Sidhu the party’s chief ministerial candidate forced them to abandon their plan to join the new party.

He fought the 2019 Lok Sabha elections from Sri Anandpur Sahib and won mainly due to the efforts of the then Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh.

Apart from being a member of the group of 23 dissenters who sought organisational reforms, he had criticised UPA government in his new book over its reaction to the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks. Why this realisation now and not when he was a minister.