Crisis again in Congress: What is Ajay Maken up to in Delhi?

Last week, in an unexpected move that flummoxed the Congress leadership, already exasperated by the unending turf war between Ashok Gehlot and Sachin Pilot, Ajay Maken resigned as general secretary in-charge of the party’s Rajasthan desk.

The timing of Maken’s resignation is peculiar. It came weeks before the planned entry of Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra into Rajasthan and also close on the heels of the crucial municipal elections in Delhi, Maken’s political karmabhoomi.

Maken is reportedly peeved at his new party president, Mallikarjun Kharge’s indecision over the disciplinary action to be taken against Rajasthan Congress MLAs close to Gehlot who, in September, raised a banner of revolt against then Congress chief Sonia Gandhi’s presumed bid to appoint Pilot as the desert state’s new chief minister.

Return to Delhi politics

The “salient points” made by Maken in his resignation, however, have left his party colleagues a tad puzzled on what political role the former Union minister and, arguably, one of the party’s most prominent faces in Delhi, envisages for himself, henceforth. More so, as Maken is now being accused by a section within the Congress of having leaked his resignation to the media even before Kharge could decide on what to do with it.

“I want to concentrate on Delhi. Through trade unions and NGOs, I intend to raise the issues of air pollution, and fight for the rights of street vendors, slum dwellers and residents of unauthorised colonies, for whom I had made specific valuable contributions as the minister in the Union and state Governments (sic),” Maken has said.

Also read: Cong replaces Avinash Pande with Ajay Maken as Rajasthan in-charge

Maken’s expression of interest in taking the trade union and NGO route for a return to Delhi politics is perplexing. Since the demise of Sheila Dikshit, who ruled Delhi for three consecutive terms between 1998 and 2013, Maken is among the few remaining Congressmen in the city-state of any political consequence.

Though in the aftermath of the Congress’s steady wipe-out by Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) since 2013, Maken failed to win his own elections (in 2014 and 2019 from the New Delhi Lok Sabha seat and from Delhi’s Sadar Assembly seat in 2015), his past electoral record still holds him in good stead.

He was elected as an MLA for three consecutive terms between 1993 and 2004, served as minister in the Sheila Dikshit government and as the Speaker of the Delhi Assembly, before winning the 2004 and 2009 Lok Sabha polls from New Delhi, he has served as a Union minister in the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government.

Role in digging Congress’ grave in Delhi

This is not to say that Maken is the Congress’s only hope for electoral revival in Delhi. There are, in fact, many within the party who believe it was Maken’s long-running war of brinkmanship with Dikshit and, subsequently, his machinations to ensure no other intra-party rival came up as an acceptable leader that collectively played a significant role in digging the Congress’ grave in Delhi.

His detractors in the Congress still point to Maken’s disastrous run as the Delhi Congress chief in 2015, when the party, for the first time in the brief history of Delhi Assembly elections, failed to win a single seat. It was a defeat that the Congress is yet to recover from. As Kejriwal tightened his political grip over Delhi, the Congress drew a blank again in the 2020 assembly polls during which Maken had almost entirely stayed away from campaigning.

Also read: Gehlot-Pilot turf war returns to haunt Congress; Kharge has his task cut out

Yet, despite his electoral failures of the past decade, Maken retains political clout in Delhi, complimented by the fact that he also enjoys proximity to both Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi. He is seen largely as a leader who steers clear of unnecessary controversies and is combative in his criticism of both, the AAP and the BJP.

Thus, his assertion to work in Delhi not in a leadership role within the Congress but through trade unions and NGOs seems odd, especially, at a time when his party is staring at another electoral rout in the Delhi municipal corporation polls to be held on December 4.

The significance of Delhi’s municipal polls

For reasons that are both political and administrative, the municipal elections in Delhi are no less significant than the polls to the city-state’s Assembly. Due to Delhi’s complicated power structure, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), in aspects of civic infrastructure and amenities, affects the national capital’s voters in more direct and significant ways than the policies of the elected Delhi government.

Electorally too, the MCD has a peculiar history wherein the BJP has, so far, managed to retain its dominance despite having lost every Assembly election since 1998 – first to the Congress and then to the AAP. With the BJP seemingly facing heavy anti-incumbency at the MCD-level due to various issues, the upcoming polls could have been an opportunity for the Congress to regain lost ground even though the AAP’s popularity continues to be on the ascendant.

Given this backdrop and the significance of the municipal polls, a more defined political role for Maken in Delhi could have come in handy for the Congress in its efforts for revival. But for reasons best known to Maken, he seems to be giving the impression of distancing himself from the Delhi Congress, while simultaneously claiming that he wants to return to his work in Delhi.

Also read: A month gone, Kharge’s Congress still caught in status quo

What really is Maken’s plan?

So what really is Maken’s plan? He told this writer shortly after resigning from his organisational responsibility in Rajasthan that he wants to focus on “exposing” the AAP’s “fraud Delhi model” because he firmly believes that “Kejriwal is dangerous for the Congress and the country”.

On his role in the MCD polls, Maken said he would “campaign wherever the party asks me to”, while making it clear that as far as Delhi is concerned, the AAP is the principal source of the Congress’s political misery. Kejriwal’s political ambitions, Maken believes, have to be “nipped in the bud” and to this end, he feels ensuring the AAP’s defeat in the MCD elections is paramount.

Over the next few weeks, Maken is reportedly planning a series of ‘exposes’ targeting AAP and is learnt to be arming himself with official data on an alleged “power scam” in Delhi under Kejriwal’s watch. How much of this will actually help the Congress in the absence of sustained efforts for organisational rejuvenation at the grassroots in its erstwhile bastion, however, remains a question to which there are no ready answers.

In fact, Maken’s intra-party rival, Sheila Dikshit’s son and former MP, Sandeep Dikshit – another Congress leader more at ease with the NGO circuit than in the political sphere – too has repeatedly been dishing out data at press conferences to expose chinks in Kejriwal’s claims of unprecedented development in Delhi under the AAP regime. Neither Maken nor Delhi Congress chief Anil Chaudhary or any other important leader of the party have backed up Sandeep’s initiative.

Will Maken’s bid to do the same meet a similar fate, with no incremental political gains for the Congress? Or does he have a Plan B that he isn’t ready to share just yet?

(The writer is a senior journalist based in Delhi)