Rocked by desertions of senior leaders in Uttarakhand, the Congress high command is witnessing a repeat of what happened in Haryana and Assam, where aided by Congress’ disgruntled representatives, the Bharatiya Janata Party was able to come to power in the two states on its own strength. The BJP has occupied pole position in the hill state, particularly after immensely popular Congress leader and its Dalit face Yashpal Arya severed his 40-year association and jumped over to the BJP in the presence of president Amit Shah and former Chief Minister Bhagat Singh Koshyari.
Miffed over the denial of ticket from the Nainital (Scheduled Caste) seat to his son, Yashpal Arya, who is MLA from Bajpur, decided to part company with the Congress on being prodded by Vijay Bahuguna and declined to take calls from Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who swung into a damage control mode in an attempt to salvage the situation. Sources said that there were multiple missed calls on Arya’s phone from Priyanka, but Bahuguna ensured that Arya did not respond to the last minute overtures and instead brought him to meet Shah.
Bahuguna, who had led a revolt of Congress leaders in the state after Harish Rawat replaced him as the Chief Minister, is likely to play a pivotal role in the Assembly polls, along with eight other MLAs who had joined the saffron brigade. In addition, Satpal Maharaj, former MP and an influential leader too, had shifted his loyalties to the BJP. Former Chief Minister Narayan Dutt Tewari’s son Rohit joined the BJP as well last week. With Arya and Kedar Rawat leaving the Congress, the BJP is expected to sweep the polls in Uttarakhand. The Haryana and Assam situation is on the brink of being replicated, as in these two states, leaders such as Chaudhry Birendra Singh, Rao Inderjit Singh and Himanta Biswa Sharma had plotted the downfall of the Congress.
An anxious Congress president Sonia Gandhi is understood to have pulled up Harish Rawat during a meeting of the Central Election Committee and held him responsible for the exodus from the party ranks to the BJP. Rawat, who has worked extensively at the grassroots level, was unable to adequately respond to the charge and tried to downplay the admonishment. The irony is that the BJP in the state is acutely divided, with several factions working against each other. However, the desertions from the Congress are bound to benefit it extensively.
The Congress leadership is also seriously perturbed over what it is describing as a turnaround by the Samajwadi Party on an alliance in Uttar Pradesh. Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has been ignoring repeated phone calls from Priyanka and till Saturday morning declined to meet her emissary Dheeraj, who has been camping in Lucknow with a message from the high command. A senior leader stated on condition of anonymity that it was politically inept for the top leaders of the Congress to expect the Chief Minister to meet a very junior person like Dheeraj, even though he was Priyanka’s emissary. “There is no seriousness in this action and unless a party general secretary like Ghulam Nabi Azad or Janardhan Dwivedi were drafted for the talks with Akhilesh, the Samajawadi Party would not come down from its present rigid position”.
Sources said that even Rahul Gandhi is dispirited over the way things have turned out in UP and had conveyed to his mother that his month-long Deoria to Delhi Yatra had been wasted. He and his sister have not been on the same page and on occasions have sharply differed on the strategy, which is at present being handled by Priyanka. Like in Uttarakhand, there have been desertions in UP as well, with former UP Pradesh Congress Committee chief Rita Bahuguna Joshi leading the walkout from the Congress. Several sitting MLAs have already quit the party and are contesting the elections on the symbols of the BSP, SP and BJP.
According to sources, the SP has refused to concede to the Congress demand of relinquishing all seats in the Parliamentary constituencies of Rae Bareli and Amethi represented by Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, respectively. Further, many SP leaders are stating that Rahul’s active campaigning for Raj Babbar in the 2009 polls against Dimple Yadav, the Chief Minister’s wife is a long standing grudge being held against the Congress. Dimple had lost the poll and Akhilesh at that time had vowed to subsequently teach Rahul a lesson.
It is being feared that if the Congress loses badly in the Assembly polls, its presence would further shrink nationally. Therefore, it is pertinent that the party does some stock checking and takes firm decisions to provide it with a new direction. Incidentally, it appears that no introspection by the Congress high command regarding reasons of the poll debacle in the 2014 Parliamentary polls has been done so far.