Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Dec 24: The former Uttarakhand chief minister Harish Rawat seems to have succeeded in scaring out the Congress high command to submit to his threat to take “political sanyas” and has been re-assured that he would leading the party in the coming elections to the state Assembly.
Soon after his tweets on Thursday expressing his dismay over the party “tying his hands while asking him to swim in the sea of elections,” Rawat was contacted by the party general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Varda and on Friday, he and several other state leaders were summoned to Delhi for a talk with Rahul Gandhi to iron out the differences.
Emerging out of the nearly four hour long meeting with Rahul Gandhi, a satisfied Rawat said, “I will lead as the campaign committee chairman and everyone will support me.” Besides Rawat, among others summoned and attended the meeting with Rahul were the state party chief Ganesh Godiyal, the legislature party leader Pritam Singh, Kishore Upadhyaya and other top leaders.
Though the party did not name him the chief ministerial candidate if the Congress returned to power in Uttarakhand, Harish Rawat has squeezed out of the high command what he wanted, as the chief of the campaign committee he would not be one among other leaders but would be the party leader and it main face in the elections.
Rawat’s outbursts on Thursday apparently was caused by the differences he had developed with the AICC in-charge for the state, a small-time Delhi leader Devender Yadav, a lightweight Delhi politician. The 49-year-old two-time MLA, Yadav belongs to a wealthy family in Delhi with interests in both business and politics. A civil engineering degree holder, he entered the Congress “organisation system” some 20 years ago when the then Indian Youth Congress chief Randeep Singh Surjewala inducted him in his committee as a national general secretary. He was named the party in-charge of Uttarakhand in September, last year.
Yadav’s insistence on collective leadership was not a surprise given the Congress’s reluctance to name a CM candidate before polls, which could ruffle feathers inopportunely. The only recent exception has been Punjab, when the Congress announced Amarinder Singh as its CM candidate in 2017.
However, Rawat, and many said legitimately, felt that the stress on collective leadership took away his primacy and made him one among the equals. His contention was that the party should give him the lead role even if it didn’t officially anoint him as the CM face.
Adding to Rawat’s insecurity was Yadav’s proximity to a group of leaders led by CLP leader Pritam Singh as well as to working president Ranjeet Rawat, AICC secretary Qazi Nizamuddin and state unit treasurer Aryendra Sharma. Once a close associate of Harish Rawat, Ranjeet Rawat was said to have commented earlier this year that the former chief minister now needs to take rest.
Rawat’s public outburst on social media, sources said, was calculated. “He perhaps wanted to go on the offensive and push Yadav and the others on the defensive so that he can retain the edge when it comes to ticket distribution,” a leader said.
The immediate trigger were developments ahead of Rahul Gandhi’s rally in Dehradun last week. Sources close to Rawat claimed his posters and cutouts were “purposely” removed from “main spots” on the eve of the meeting, and he was kept out of the seating arrangements on the dais. “Even the PCC was sidelined,” a leader said.
“I will be the face of the election campaign in Uttarakhand. I will lead as chairman of the campaign panel and everyone will support me in fulfilling that responsibility,” Rawat told reporters after meeting with Rahul. He, however, evaded a direct question on being declared as the party’s chief ministerial face. “In Congress, after the election is completed, legislature party meets to decide their leader. They send their recommendation to the Congress president and then the president decides who will lead the legislature party. We will follow the same procedure on Uttarakhand too,” he stated.
“We will fight this election under the leadership of Harish Rawat, who is the chairman of the campaign committee,” Mr. Godiyal observed. Congress leader said Rawat would be the face of the Congress in Uttarakhand but the Congress president will decide who will be chief minister. “Harish Rawat is happy with that,” the leader said.
The meeting, which was primarily chaired by organisational general secretary KC Venugopal and had Rahul Gandhi dropping in towards the end, tried to assuage Rawat’s feelings of being left out of the decision-making process. “Even though he is the head of the campaign committee, he felt that he wasn’t getting his way. So we tried to speak to both sides and get them to listen to each other, to keep the other side in the loop,” a party leader preset at the meeting said.
The Congress is looking to dislodge the BJP from power in the hill state, which Rawat served as chief minister between 2014 and 2017. The BJP is roiled by troubles of its own, and has changed its chief minister thrice in the last year. In the 70-member assembly, the BJP has 55 members and the Congress has 12. There is a section of the party which feels that at 73, Harish Rawat should step aside and make way for a new leadership. Gandhi is said to be quite keen on an alternative face as he picked in Punjab, a Dalit leader. It is significant that their Dalit face Yashpal Arya. who recently rejoined the Congress from the BJP, also attended the meeting on Friday.
