The switch of two senior Assam Congress leaders to the BJP – Lok Sabha MP Pradyut Bordoloi and ex-state party chief Bhupen Borah – within a month has not just derailed the party’s campaign for the April Assembly elections, but has also severely jolted All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.
Priyanka is playing a key role in party affairs in Assam, overseeing the selection of candidates for the elections.
The appointment of Lok Sabha MP Gaurav Gogoi – a close confidant of Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi – as the Assam Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) chief in May last year, and the move to give Priyanka a key role in the Assembly polls were perceived
as signals that the Congress was putting in serious efforts to wrest the state back from the BJP, which has been in power there for a decade. However, Gogoi’s appointment is proving to be a trigger for disenchantment among the Congress ranks.
While sections of the AICC accuse Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma – a former Congress leader who quit the party in 2015 – of “engineering” these defections, party leaders admit that the rot in the state unit is far more deeper. Fingers are being pointed at what many leaders say is Gogoi’s “unilateral” functioning in both candidate selection and campaign management.
“He (Gaurav) does not trust anyone and seems to think everyone is Himanta’s agent. Even as the party tasked (political strategist) Sunil Kanugolu with undertaking surveys for candidate selection, we learnt that Gaurav had roped in another agency to carry out his own survey. Then, there are unsubstantiated rumours about money exchanging hands for candidate selection,” an AICC leader said.
Setback for Priyanka
The high-profile defections from the Congress have taken the sheen off Priyanka’s maiden attempt to manage elections in a state outside Uttar Pradesh. Her first shot at direct election management – after being the silent backroom power behind Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP) chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Rahul for years – as general secretary in-charge of eastern Uttar Pradesh for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls turned out to be a fiasco. The Congress managed to win only one of UP’s 80 seats – Sonia from Rae Bareli – with Rahul too losing from the family bastion of Amethi.
Priyanka also came a cropper in her first bid as full fledged election manager and campaigner in UP Assembly elections three years later. Despite a spirited women oriented campaign with a “ladki hun, lad sakti hun (I am a woman, I can fight)” pitch, the party won just two of the state’s 403 seats.
Now, a full blown crisis stares her in the face in Assam.
Bordoloi ‘betrayal’
While the writing on the wall was clear as far as Bordoloi was concerned, Priyanka and the Congress were hopeful that he would not switch sides owing to decades-long association with the Congress. A two-term MP from Nagaon, he was a three-time minister in the previous Tarun Gogoi-led Congress governments in Assam. But issues were far more complicated, party sources said.
A senior Congress leader said Bordoloi had surprised the AICC and state Congress leaders a couple of months ago when he, at a meeting of the Political Affairs Committee (PAC) of the Assam Congress, said Gaurav Gogoi was sure to become CM while he as well as other senior leaders were ready to work under him. The AICC managers had then heaved a sigh of relief. But both Borah and Bordoloi were upset with Gogoi’s functioning.
“While it is said that Bordoloi was not in the race for the APCC president or CM posts, one fact which cannot be ignored is that the AICC’s move to virtually project Gogoi as the CM face has led to heartburns. Tarun Gogoi was over 80, Gaurav is only in his early 40s. There is a generation of leaders in the 50s and 60s, who feel disenchanted,” a state Congress leader said.
That Borah was the head of the party’s campaign committee and Bordoloi headed the manifesto panel for the upcoming polls has caused more distress in the Congress. “With what face will we release our manifesto? Our manifesto committee chairman himself has gone to the other side, a month after our campaign committee chief joined the BJP,” one Congress leader said.
Grounds for defection
The immediate trigger for Bordoloi’s exit was over selection of the candidate in the Laharighat seat, which falls under his Nagaon Lok Sabha constituency. He was against sitting MLA Asif Mohammad Nazar being fielded again. “We have not yet announced the candidate for the seat. I think Bordoloi’s decision to quit had to do with something else,” an AICC leader said.
In a letter addressed to the AICC’s Assam in-charge Jitendra Singh Sunday, Bordoloi said he had been “humiliated” during the party’s deliberations over candidate selections. He also claimed his concerns over the alleged patronage by Nazar to an individual, who was arrested for attacking him, have not been taken seriously.
On the other hand, Singh said the Congress had “given everything to Bordoloi”. “It is unfortunate that he has decided to part ways with the Congress and join the BJP,” he added.
Interestingly, Bordoloi had thrown his weight behind fellow Lok Sabha MP Shashi Tharoor in the latter’s election bid for the post of Congress president against Mallikarjun Kharge in 2022.