The crisis brewing in Uttarakhand Congress seems to have blown over, at least for now

The Congress seems to have made scoring self-goals a habit. Blame it on the party high command or the lack of insight/greed for power of its local leaders, its State units are routinely washing dirty linen in public; earlier in Punjab and now in Uttarakhand. All this, when Assembly elections are just round the corner. Days after an annoyed Harish Rawat virtually raised the banner of revolt against the Congress leadership and took his grievances to Rahul Gandhi, he has been sort of mollified with the promise of being given a “free hand” to fight the election. The grouse and ill tempers reached Delhi after Rawat, miffed over the so-called “internal bickering” in the State unit, came out openly to say that he was being forced to fight the election with “one hand tied behind my back”. As is the party’s wont, it’s only then that the leadership grew alarmed at the prospect of the Punjab, Rajasthan, Assam and Chhattisgarh situation repeating itself in the Himalayan State. In its bid to iron out the differences, the Congress high command summoned Harish Rawat and other State leaders — including Pritam Singh, Ganesh Godiyal and Kishore Upadhyay — to Delhi for a meeting with the Gandhi scion.

It is believed that some sort of truce has been reached but how long it will last is anybody’s guess. Interestingly, the Congress high command while appointing a leader in a State also starts propping up other leaders there, thus making the party’s State unit an unstable enterprise. In Uttarakhand, the rift between Rawat and AICC in-charge Devender Yadav can be detrimental to the party’s prospects in the poll. It’d divide the cadre vertically down the middle and give enough leverage to the BJP during and after the election. During Rahul’s rally in Dehradun last week, Rawat’s posters and cutouts were removed from the venue and he was kept out of the seating arrangement on the dais, allegedly at Yadav’s instance. Yadav (49), a two-time MLA whose father Mahender was a small-time Congress politician, belongs to a rich family in Delhi and was appointed in charge of Uttarakhand in September 2020. Rawat’s insecurity stems from his proximity to CLP leader Pritam Singh as well as working president Ranjeet Rawat. Understandably, Harish Rawat wants to have an edge in matters pertaining to ticket distribution.