‘No other leader in the party has such a mass base as the 73-year-old Rawat’.
New Delhi: With former chief minister and party national general secretary Harish Rawat appointed as the president of the 2022 election committee in the state and his close aide, Ganesh Godiya, as the president of the Uttarakhand party unit, the Congress high command has sent a clear signal that the 73-year-old Rawat is going to be the party’s face in the hill state which goes for polls in March 2022. After settling a four-month-long stalemate in its Punjab unit, the Congress leadership is making key appointments and reshuffling in the states which have to go for polls. Along with the president in the state congress, four other working presidents have been appointed—Tilak Raj Behad, Ranjit Rawat, Jeet Ram and Bhuwan Kapri. The party has also tried to balance the regional and caste combination in the state by appointing Godiyal, a Brahmin as Congress chief.
The outgoing Uttarakhand Congress chief Pritam Singh has been given the responsibility of the leader of Opposition in the state Assembly, the post of leader of Opposition has been lying vacant after the demise of senior party leader Indira Hridayesh. Other key appointments in the Congress include the charge to Rajya Sabha member Pradeep Tamta as vice president and former minister Dinesh Agrawal as the convenor of the party’s election committee. “No other leader in the party has such a mass base as Rawat, he is the party’s visible and acceptable face and people had liked his stint as the chief minister between 2014-17,” Neeta Bora Sharma, political analyst and professor of political science at Kumaun University, told The Sunday Guardian. “Undoubtedly, the decision of the party to appoint him as the campaign committee chief is going to help it in the upcoming polls,” she added.
Many also believe that with Rawat and his loyalist at the helm of affairs in the party, many leaders may get upset as they would have hardly any say in the ticket distribution in the Assembly polls. Factionalism in the party has been its biggest drawback since the formation of the state in 2000, but party leaders have refuted the charges.
“The new team is made with a focus on winning the 2022 state Assembly elections which we are sure to win. There are no differences in the party and we are fighting the election collectively,” Ganesh Godiyal, the newly appointed Uttarakhand Congress chief, told The Sunday Guardian. “My only aim is to boost the morale of the workers and form a Congress government in 2022,” he added. Godiyal also made it clear that he had no ambitions to become the CM if Congress comes to power. “I must tell this clearly that there are many leaders in the Congress who are much senior and experienced in comparison to me to lead the state; hence, I have no ambitions of becoming the CM,” he told The Sunday Guardian.
With the entry of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the state, Congress has another challenger to its Opposition space. “This is a do-or-die battle for the party; we were reduced to 11 seats out of 70 in the 2017 polls, hence, it is to the benefit of every leader and worker to fight under the new team, and the able leadership of the senior-most leader Harish Rawat and form the government,” a senior leader told The Sunday Guardian on the condition of anonymity. Rawat has been credited for solving the standoff in the Punjab Congress unit, but the question is can he unite the party in his own state and fight the BJP’s election machine in 2022.