Haryana: Dalit leader Ashok Tanwar's return to Congress stuns BJP on poll eve

In a dramatic turn of events, former Sirsa MP and BJP’s only major Dalit face in Haryana, Ashok Tanwar, rejoined the Congress party hours before campaigning for the state’s Assembly polls was to end. Interestingly, just hours before he arrived at the Mahendragarh venue of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s final campaign rally in Haryana, Tanwar was soliciting votes for the BJP in Haryana through his social media handles. (See the picture)

What triggered the Dalit leader’s sudden shift in political loyalties could not be immediately ascertained. Sources in the Haryana unit of the Congress also expressed surprise at Tanwar’s sudden return, with one senior leader close to the party’s de facto CM face, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, telling The Federal, “Barring Rahul Gandhi and Hooda saheb, I think no one else in the party was aware of his joining.”

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Ashok Tanwar lauds Congress

Shortly after returning to the party, Tanwar told The Federal, “I quit the Congress five years ago due to personal reasons, but irrespective of wherever I went, I always felt I belonged here (in the Congress). I also never lost touch with the leaders who had given me my first chance to serve the people as a politician. Even when I was with the BJP, I never made any personal attacks or said anything insulting about the Congress or its senior leadership. Now that I am back in the Congress, I will strive to strengthen the party and will work as a soldier of Rahul Gandhi, who is the only leader in the country today speaking about the rights and welfare of everyone, especially the Dalit, tribals, and backward communities.”

Tanwar, who previously served as the president of the Indian Youth Congress and as a Congress MP from Sirsa in the 15th Lok Sabha, had joined the BJP earlier this year and unsuccessfully contested the general elections as the party’s candidate from Sirsa against veteran Congress leader Kumari Selja. Incidentally, Tanwar’s return to the Congress comes at a time when Selja, the Congress’s tallest Dalit leader in Haryana, has been locked in a bitter turf war with Hooda, with her supporters, as well as the BJP, dubbing her visible sidelining in the party as an affront to the Dalit community.

On his part, Tanwar perhaps fits perfectly into the mold of the ‘Aya Ram, Gaya Ram’ politics (a colloquial reference to leaders frequently changing political parties) that Haryana is infamous for. Once a Rahul Gandhi confidant and former chief of the Haryana Congress, Tanwar had quit the party in 2019 over differences with Bhupinder Hooda.

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From Cong to JJP to TMC to AAP to BJP to Congress!

In the past five years, Tanwar hopped from Dushyant Chautala’s fledgling Jananayak Janata Party (JJP) to Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress, then to Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party, and finally to the BJP before his “ghar waapsi” to the Congress. Curiously, he had quit the AAP earlier this year in protest against the party’s decision to ally with Congress and contest the Haryana Lok Sabha polls under the INDIA bloc’s umbrella.

Though not a mass leader in the league of Hooda or even Selja, Tanwar does enjoy some political clout among the state’s Dalit community, particularly in and around Sirsa, despite his frequently changing political affiliations.

Surprise within Congress ranks

Tanwar’s return to the Congress, less than 48 hours before Haryana goes to the polls, comes as a shot in the arm for the Grand Old Party, which has been ill at ease explaining the unfiltered outbursts of its pre-eminent Dalit face in the state – Kumari Selja – against Hooda.

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Attacked by the BJP and other regional political players of Haryana for “insulting” its senior Dalit leader in a state where the community comprises a staggering 22 percent of the electorate, the Congress has been on the defensive, making bumbling efforts to present a picture of unity between Hooda and Selja. At a recent poll rally, Rahul Gandhi had to intervene to make Selja and Hooda hold hands and wave to the crowds together, while during another rally, he made a scarcely veiled admission of the rivalry between the two leaders while asserting that both were “working for the party’s victory.”

Cong’s pro-dalit politics

What role Tanwar will eventually play in the Congress, or how he will gel with Hooda in his second innings with the party, is difficult to say at the moment. Sources, however, told The Federal that over the next two days, the Congress will project Tanwar’s return to its fold as a validation of the party’s pro-Dalit politics.