Though the bitter infighting between Uttarakhand Chief Minister Harish Rawat and the Congress party’s state unit president Kishore Upadhyaya is threatening to derail next month’s assembly polls for the party, Rawat is learnt to have secured the backing of the party leadership, which is veering around to the view that he is the party’s tallest leader in the hill-state and that it cannot afford to alienate him.
Upadhyaya, on the other hand, has lost out primarily because he failed to build a following in the state though the Congress leadership had especially appointed him president of the Uttarakhand unit to groom a Brahmin leader as an alternate power centre in the state.
But Upadhyaya proved he was no match for the wily Rawat who was always a step ahead of his bête noire.
Congress leaders admitted that Rawat’s reputation and credibility has taken a hit over the past few months. He is under attack by his own colleagues for his autocratic style of functioning while charges of corruption and nepotism are also being levelled against him. But despite his failings, the party believes that Rawat is still its best bet. Upadhyaya, on the other hand, cannot even win his own seat without the help of the chief minister. He had lost the last assembly election to a Congress rebel.
Weakness is strength
“Rawat is our weakness but he is also our biggest strength,” remarked a senior Congress leader. According to him, Rawat’s track record in governance and his personal style of functioning will be targeted by his political rivals in next month’s assembly polls and the Congress has little choice but to rely on him and project him as the party’s face because it has no other leader of his stature in Uttarakhand.
Though it is abundantly clear Rawat will have a free hand in the selection of candidates for the coming assembly polls, he has been told to sort out matters with Upadhyaya before the names are finalised over the next couple of days.
”We have asked the two leaders to sit together and resolve their differences over the list of candidates. There has to be some give and take,” remarked a senior Congress leader.
It has to be seen if Upadhyaya will succeed in getting himself a ticket from the Tehri seat, which he had lost to independent candidate Dinesh Dhanai in 2012. Rawat had subsequently inducted Dhanai in his Cabinet, which lent credibility to Upadhayaya’s charge that the chief minister had sabotaged his election. Rawat is insisting that the Tehri seat be left for Dhanai but Upadhayaya has again staked his claim to it.
While the party has resigned itself to the fact that it has no alternative but to give in to Rawat, it is also worried that he could begin to believe in his invincibility and start dictating terms to the central leadership. Parallels are often draw between Rawat and former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda who has been functioning as an “autonomous and independent entity” both in and out of power. For instance, like Rawat, Hooda is also locked in a bitter confrontation with the Haryana Congress chief Ashok Tanwar, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s personal choice, but the party’s central leadership has failed to rein him in.
Close contest
It’s the same story with Rawat. Congress leaders in Delhi have periodically urged the rival leaders to sink their differences and work together but to little avail. Not only has the chief minister refused to make peace with his disgruntled colleagues, he has actively worked to undermine them. But the leadership has been constrained from pushing him too far as Rawat is the party’s leading Thakur leader in Uttarakhand which has a substantial Thakur population.
With Rawat emerging as a target of attack by his own colleagues and his political opponents, next month’s assembly election is turning out to be a close contest. “It is touch and go in Uttarakhand for us,” remarked a senior Congress leader. He maintained the Congress was certain to return to power if it had decided to call an early poll last year after the Supreme Court reinstated the Rawat government which had been brought down by the Bharatiya Janata Party.
The Congress could pay a heavy price for this decision as the BJP has recovered substantial ground in the last six months while Rawat’s personal stock has fallen. In fact, the BJP has emerged as a strong contender after the army conducted surgical strikes on terror camps across the line of control and the Modi government decided to invalidate high value currency notes. The groundswell of support for these decisions has not just revived the BJP but it has also enhanced Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s personal image. Though handicapped by too many chief ministerial candidates, the BJP is now depending on Modi’s charisma to pull off this election. “The Uttarakhand election is evenly poised…we can pull it off if we can put up a united fight,” said a senior Congress office bearer.