Ahead of the assembly election in Uttarakhand scheduled the next year, the Congress party is facing worries after one of the sitting MLA of the party Rajkumar joined the BJP. Rajkumar who was earlier with the BJP had won the last assembly election from Purola assembly seat on a Congress ticket.
Rajkumar had joined and left BJP multiple times in the last several years. After being elected as BJP MLA from Sahaspur in 2007, he had left the party 2012 when he was denied a ticket. He had contested as an independent candidate from Purola in 2012, but didn’t win. Rajkumar returned to BJP 2013. But when he was again denied a ticket in 2017, he joined Congress. He was fielded from Purola, and he won the election this time.
But he has again returned to BJP, saying that he is impressed with the good work of the party. He said, “The BJP is working towards making people from the lower castes independent, while Congress has made these people dependent on subsidies since Independence. I’ve joined the party today after seeing BJP’s great work in Uttarakhand.”
Now amid the signs of desertion, the Uttarakhand Congress has decided to send observers and co-observers across districts of the state for the ground assessment of the affairs of the party with a direction to submit the confidential report to the state unit within 15 days.
Ganesh Godiyal, who has recently been picked for the job of state president has appointed senior leaders, MLAs and office-bearers as observers and co-observers. He has also informed the co-in-charge of the state unit of the party Dipika Pandey Singh, an MLA from Jharkhand who has been picked by the central leadership to revive the electoral prospects of the party in Uttarakhand.
Observers and co-observers have been asked to hold meetings with office-bearers and workers of the party at the district level in the assigned districts.
A party leader said that incidents of party leaders joining other parties send an adverse message against the Congress party. He added that the state unit is trying its best to keep the leaders together and contest the Assembly polls to get back power.
“Observers and co-observers will tour all the districts and hold a review of organisational activities of booth committees, affairs of district units and check whether these units and leaders there are working in coordination with each other or not,” said Mathura Datt Joshi, party’s senior spokesperson and general secretary (organisation).
Apart from this, the state Congress unit has also decided to consider re-induction those party leaders who had been expelled from the party for anti-party activities in past five years. A committee will examine the requests of such expelled leaders.
Only time can tell whether such exercise can resolve the deep-rooted crisis and trust deficit the party has been facing. A few days back, the former state president of the Congress Kishore Upadhyaya too joined the BJP. However, during election time such changes of consorts are quite natural but the Congress is worried that such desertion will escalate into a massive problem for the party.
The party is already plagued by intense internal factionalism and there is no serious move from the central leadership to resolve it. The factionalism between the camps led by former chief minister Harish Rawat and leader of opposition Pritam Singh has worse affected the party. This is not a single case of factionalism.
The central leadership has endorsed Rawat as the chief ministerial face by appointing him as chairman of the election campaign committee. Rawat managed the post of state party president for Garhwali Brahmin industrialist Ganesh Godiyal who is a known Rawat loyalist.
But such arrangements have miffed others. Kishore Upadhyay, a Garhwali Brahmin, quit the party because of this. Former minister and another Brahmin from the Garhwal region Navprabhat decided to stay away from any committee. He was expecting the central leadership to promote him as state unit chief but he was asked to prepare the party manifesto.
