After Lovely’s ‘ugly’ exit, Congress faces daunting task of picking successor

To recover from the shock inflicted by the abrupt exit of Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee president Arvinder Singh Lovely, especially in view of the May 25 election in Delhi’s seven Lok Sabha constituencies, the party is trying to find a suitable replacement as quickly as possible. If Congress insiders are to be believed, the party high command is likely to consider MLA Devendra Yadav for the post.

Yadav, 51, has twice been elected to the Delhi Assembly from Badli, which is part of the North-West Delhi Lok Sabha seat. He is also the AICC in-charge of Punjab, besides being a permanent invitee to the Congress Working Committee (CWC). Congress sources say he may initially be made the working president of the Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee (DPCC).

Also in the race is former Congress MLA from Shahdara, Dr Narender Nath, sources said. The 78-year-old has been a minister in the Delhi government, besides being DPCC vice-president in the past. Currently, he is in charge of the Delhi Congress' disciplinary committee.

Team Lovely sidelined

Lovely ran the DPCC in close consultation with trusted colleagues such as Subhash Chopra, Raj Kumar Chauhan, and Sandeep Dikshit. But all these Congress leaders, as also others close to them, are being ruled out of the list of probables to replace Lovely after the latest revolt by him against the party. Instead, Yadav is being considered for the top post.

Lovely had mentioned all the three colleagues close to him, besides a few others, in his four-page resignation letter dated April 27 to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge to bolster his charges. Soon after Lovely’s resignation letter was read out by TV anchors on Sunday (April 28), the party high command accepted it.

Congress general secretary and in-charge of Delhi, Deepak Babaria – whom Lovely had partially blamed for his resignation – called his exit “unfortunate”. Lovely’s close associates are said to have leaked his parting note to a few TV channels.

Rift with colleagues

The Congress is of the view that Lovely has been under pressure from the BJP for some time. He had shifted to the BJP in 2017, but later re-joined the Congress. He had been under the watch of Congress higher-ups as he often differed or showed reservation over some of the party’s moves.

Lovely and his cohorts also resented the rise of new entrants in the Grand Old Party. Congress insiders recall that some time back there was an open verbal spat at the DPCC office between former Congress MP Sandeep Diskshit and Kanhaiya Kumar, now the Congress candidate from the North-East Delhi Lok Sabha seat.

Beef with AAP

In the Congress, Lovely’s revolt is seen to have been triggered by the Lok Sabha battle. He is reported to have been keen on contesting preferably from East Delhi although Lovely denied this in his resignation letter. This seat has been allotted to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) as part of the INDIA alliance.

AAP MLA Kuldeep Kumar is the alliance candidate from East Delhi. He is pitted against BJP’s former East Delhi Mayor Harsh Malhotra. Former Congress MLA from Okhla, Asif Mohammad Khan, has alleged that under a deal struck by Lovely with the BJP in lieu of his revolt against the Congress, he may replace Malhotra as the BJP’s East Delhi candidate or may be rewarded by the BJP in some other manner.

Khan also led a protest by his supporters at Lovely’s residence accusing him of betraying the Congress. This turned, as per reports, into a brawl between Khan and Lovely’s supporters.

Congress sources say that Lovely and his close colleagues in the party became uneasy, restive and desperate after the party gave two of the three seats allotted to it in Delhi under the alliance with AAP to Kanhaiya and Udit Raj. Both of them are from Poorvanchal or the eastern parts of north India. Their respective North-East and North-West Delhi constituencies are home to a large number of voters from Poorvanchal where the combined strength of the Congress and AAP could well pose a stiff challenge to the BJP.

Daunting challenge

In the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP had won all the seven Lok Sabha seats of Delhi. The BJP vote share in 2014 was 46.6 per cent; this went up in 2019 to 56.9 per cent, beating the vote percentage of both the Congress and AAP put together.

Thus, the task before any of Lovely’s likely successors, whether it is Yadav or anyone else, is going to be huge and daunting in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections in Delhi. For this, the Congress has to first come out of the shadows cast by Lovely’s untimely exit.