Uttarakhand polls: Cong hopeful to spring a surprise, but hurdles galore
Disarray within the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and the recent ghar waapsi of political heavyweights such as Yashpal Arya and Harak Singh Rawat have given the Congress party hopes of wresting power in poll-bound Uttarakhand. Yet, with just over a fortnight left before the polls, is this optimism, triggered by the return of the prodigals, being neutralized by growing fissures over old loyalist and the face of the Congress’ poll campaign, former chief minister Harish Rawat?
Late Wednesday (January 26) night, within 48 hours of declaring Harish Rawat as its candidate from Nainital’s Ramnagar seat, the Congress shifted him to the Lalkuan constituency in the same district and named Mahender Pal Singh as its new nominee from Ramnagar. The party also changed its candidates for Doiwala, Jwalapur and Kaladhungi constituencies. Ranjit Rawat, who had stridently opposed Harish Rawat’s candidature from Ramnagar, has been fielded by the Congress from the Salt constituency.
Officially, Uttarakhand Congress spokesperson Ranjeet Maheshwari claimed that the last-minute changes were necessitated by “proper assessment” of win probability of the candidates. Party sources, however, insist that the Congress, in Uttarakhand, is split down the middle with Harish Rawat and his loyalists on one side and nearly all other satraps – leader of Opposition Pritam Singh, Ranjit Rawat and Yashpal Arya on the other side. On January 27, the party’s former Uttarakhand chief Kishore Upadhyay, a known Harish Rawat-critic, joined the BJP.
The Congress is battling a dilemma. “In terms of mass base, Harish Rawat is definitely our tallest leader and among few Uttarakhand politicians who have influence in both Kumaon and Garhwal regions. He is also popular with the two dominant castes of the state, the Thakurs (Rawat’s own community) and Brahmins. But, within the party, a majority of leaders are against him. They see him as a self-serving politician,” says a party veteran from the state.
Also read: Ahead of polls, BJP sacks Uttarakhand minister Harak Singh Rawat
It is this factional feud within the party that had triggered a revolt against Harish Rawat when he was CM in 2016. The subsequent defection of prominent leaders like Arya, Harak Singh, former CM Vijay Bahuguna and Satpal Maharaj – all bitter rivals of Harish – to the BJP, paved the way for a saffron sweep in the 2017 assembly polls that had left the Congress decimated with its candidates winning just 11 of the state’s 70 seats.
Harish Rawat, who had contested the 2017 polls from Haridwar Rural and Kichha constituencies, had lost from both the seats. Using Harish Rawat’s humiliating defeat, the party’s rout under his watch and defection of senior leaders due to differences with him as an excuse, the former CM’s rivals and some central Congress leaders sensed an opportunity to move him away from state politics.
“In the past five years, the party tried to push other leaders in the state. Pritam Singh and Indira Hridayesh (both anti-Harish Rawat) were made PCC chief and leader of Opposition in the assembly respectively while Harish Rawat was brought to the AICC as general secretary. However, none of his rivals managed to revive the party or project themselves as viable alternatives to Harish Rawat. As the elections came closer, we had to send Harish Rawat back to lead the campaign because all our surveys showed he was still our most popular leader among voters,” an AICC general secretary told The Federal, requesting anonymity.
However, as the Congress sat down to craft its campaign blueprint for the upcoming polls; its factional rivalries came to the fore again. Harish Rawat went into a major sulk for not being officially declared the party’s CM face and being denied a free hand in choosing candidates even though he was officially leading the campaign and had managed to have his loyalist Ganesh Godiyal appointed the PCC chief by ousting Pritam Singh, who was made the new leader of Opposition in the assembly after Hridayesh’s demise. The Thakur leader from Kumaon also took regular potshots at his colleagues. Through his social media accounts, Harish Rawat rued that though the Congress high command had given him the task of propelling the party to victory, his colleagues in the state wouldn’t even invite him for programs and rallies.
Also read: Uttarakhand: Cong high command tries damage-control, calls Rawat & Co for a chat
The wily Rawat’s outbursts stopped only after former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi intervened. Gandhi, say insiders privy to the damage-control moves, told Harish Rawat’s in-house rivals to lend him “full support” and assured them that their individual concerns against the old warhorse will be addressed “once the party wins the polls”.
The truce didn’t last long. A member of the party’s internal committee for screening potential candidates told The Federal that the delay in announcing candidates was largely because “reaching a consensus between Harish Rawat and other state leaders proved to be a daunting task”. What complicated matters further was the return of Arya, the state’s most prominent Dalit leader, and Harak Singh, a veteran MLA with significant clout in the Garhwal region, from the BJP to the Congress.
Unofficially, the Congress had decided to adopt the one-family-one-ticket rule in all five poll-bound states – others being UP, Punjab, Goa and Manipur. However, in its first list of candidates, the Congress chose to field Yashpal Arya from his traditional Bajpur seat and his son, Sanjeev Arya (he too had quit the BJP and returned to the Congress), from Nainital.
Meanwhile, Harak Singh was expelled from the BJP for “anti-party activities” and came knocking at the doors of the Congress. After days of protests by Harish Rawat against Harak Singh’s re-induction, the party high command finally overruled the former CM. Harak Singh was re-inducted after he tendered a public apology – and a personal one to Harish Rawat – for destabilizing the Congress government in Uttarakhand in 2016.
Party sources say Harak Singh wanted to contest the polls on a Congress ticket from the Chaubattakhal constituency in Pauri Garhwal against the BJP’s Satpal Maharaj. Maharaj and Harak Singh were among Congress rebels who had moved to the BJP in protest against Harish Rawat. Additionally, Harak Singh also wanted a ticket for his daughter-in-law, former Miss India Anukriti Gusain Rawat from Pauri Garhwal’s Lansdowne seat. The screening committee member quoted earlier told The Federal that Harish Rawat was opposed to Harak Singh and his daughter-in-law contesting the polls but the party eventually convinced him to soften his stance. Eventually, while the Congress fielded Anukriti from Lansdowne, Harak Singh was benched.
However, the most difficult challenge to navigate for the central leadership was the candidature of Harish Rawat himself and his demand for a ticket for his daughter, Anupama Rawat. Party insiders say his colleagues wanted Harish Rawat fielded from either Hardwar Rural or Kichha – the seats he had lost the 2017 polls from – and were opposed to a ticket for his daughter. Harish Rawat, on his part, was adamant about a ticket for Anupama and wanted the party to field him from Ramnagar. A direct consequence of this tug-of-war was that Harish Rawat’s name did not figure in the first list of 55 candidates that the party declared over a week ago.
On January 24, as the party declared its second list of candidates, it seemed Harish Rawat had finally had his way. The party fielded him from Ramnagar even though his one-time protégé Ranjit Rawat, who had wanted to contest from this seat, publicly opposed Harish Rawat’s candidature from the constituency and threatened to contest against him. An audio of Harish Rawat speaking to a party worker in Ramnagar, in which the former CM can be heard pleading for support for his candidature and being told that ‘Congress means Ranjit Rawat in Ramnagar’, was also leaked to local media channels and quickly went viral.
Within 48 hours, as resistance to Harish Rawat’s candidature peaked in Ramnagar, the party was forced to shift him to Lalkuan but, at the same time, also give in to his demand for a ticket for Anupama, who has now been fielded from Hardwar Rural.
With the Congress declaring all its candidates and Uttarakhand set to vote on February 14. Rahul Gandhi’s promise in poll-bound Punjab of announcing the party’s CM candidate for the state – a tricky choice between the state’s first Dalit Sikh CM Charanjit Singh Channi and tantrum-prone PCC chief Navjot Singh Sidhu – soon is likely to trigger Harish Rawat into demanding, once again, that the party follow the same rule in Uttarakhand.
In his defense, Harish Rawat’s loyalists claim the former CM is still the party’s “best bet” to win the state and that the high command must “reward his loyalty”. A confidant of the 73-year-old veteran told The Federal, “Harish Rawat has spent over five decades in the Congress; he rose up the ranks from a common Seva Dal (a Congress frontal organisation of volunteers) worker to a four-term Lok Sabha MP. He could have done much more for the state if he had got the chance to serve as CM for a full term.”
The confidant explains further that when the Congress got its first government in Uttarakhand after the state’s formation, the party overlooked Rawat and chose ND Tiwari (2002 to 2007; the only Uttarakhand CM to complete a five-year tenure) as CM. When it won next in 2012, the party chose Vijay Bahuguna. Harish Rawat finally got his chance in 2014 when Bahuguna had to step down for mishandling relief work after the devastating 2013 floods. “Within two years, Bahuguna and others like Yashpal Arya and Harak Singh Rawat conspired to topple the Congress government. The government survived despite the conspiracy but unfortunately we lost the 2017 polls. For five years, people like Arya and Harak Singh enjoyed power in the BJP government while our leaders like Pritam Singh couldn’t rebuild the party. Why should Harish Rawat, who has never betrayed the Congress, not be suitably rewarded if he can lead us to victory?” he asked.
