Krishna Tirath dumping Congress for BJP: More embarassment than debacle

New Delhi: The defection of former minister Krishna Tirath, the Congress’ Dalit face for a long time, to the BJP may not make a difference to the party’s prospects in the coming assembly elections, but it has delivered a blow to the efforts of the Congress to project the image of a united unit, and made the ride for campaign committee chief Ajay Maken a lot rougher.

The action of Tirath, who had lost her deposit in the parliamentary polls to BJP’s Udit Raj, came after she was denied ticket from the seat she wanted. However, the party unit here did not expect her to shift loyalty to the BJP so quickly.

Since his elevation, Maken has been working overtime to ensure that his troops can be in some sort of position to fight against the BJP and AAP. While he was busy briefing scribes about the U-turns done by the AAP at the party headquarters, one of the Congress’s loyalists was busy giving final touches to her arrangement with the party’s arch rivals, BJP. It was a bitter pill for the party to swallow.

“We will try and make the country Congress-free and promote women and youth,” Tirath, the former Union minister who was one of the party’s prominent Dalit faces in the capital, said after the switch.

Tirath was upset with high command over being ignored for reserved Patel Nagar assembly seat in West Delhi. Her old reserved seat of Karol Bagh made way for Patel Nagar after delimitation and she had earlier been lobbying for her daughter, but the decision makers ignored even that demand, opting for former MLA Rajesh Lilothia instead.

Tirath’s move has caught the Congress off-guard, and leaders could be seen fumbling for answers. The party has had a lot of answering to do in the past few days, whether regarding Tirath’s embarrassing exit or Delhi Congress chief Arvinder Singh Lovely deciding not to contest the assembly elections. Lovely has been winning the Gandhi Nagar seat since 1993 and has been in the hot seat since JP Agarwal made way for him as Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) president last year.

“The organization of the election in the Delhi state unit is yet to be completed. So the party has requested Arvinder Singh Lovely to withdraw from the contest,” PC Chacko, senior Congress leader and in charge of Delhi affairs, said.“He will look after the organisation of elections in Delhi,” he added.

However, party insiders said that Lovely is not sure of winning his seat this time around. He had been projecting himself as the next “face” of the party with hoardings in his constituency, but by chickening out of a fight, Lovely’s reputation has taken a big hit.

Though Congress leaders are at pains to explain that all is well within and it is organizational work that has forced Lovely to sit out, it is a last minute change of strategy on his part after Maken was given the official go ahead to manage the election campaign in Delhi. The former Delhi minister has still not given up on his ambitions to be the “right choice” for his party.

“He (Lovely) knows it will be tough for him to win, but he didn’t have any option then as he was hoping he will be projected as Congress party’s face in Delhi,” said a Congress aide, on condition of anonymity. “It is better not to contest an election and face flak rather than contest and lose one,” he added.

Though the party is hopeful of achieving double digits in the upcoming election, senior party leaders admit in private that there is little chance of all their sitting eight MLAs returning to the assembly. Lovely’s decision to stay away from the fray has tongues wagging again about the lack of coordination in the top state leadership.

There may not be a major loss for the Congress in Tirath ditching them for the BJP, but it has surely dented the party’s image. Even though she had been one of the most visible Dalit faces for the grand old party, her influence was on the wane in West Delhi. The phenomenal rise of the AAP and the failure of the Congress to stem the tide has been one of the major factors in Congress ignoring her candidature.

Out of the 12 reserved seats in Delhi, AAP had won 9, BJP bagged 2 while Congress managed just 1 seat in 2013 assembly elections. But BJP did well to lead in areas like Kondli, Karol Bagh, Patel Nagar, Trilokpuri and Mangolpuri in the 2014 general elections, and they are hoping that Tirath’s name will help them in maintaining the momentum against the AAP.

“It shows political bankruptcy within the BJP. The voters of Delhi will see through this design,” Maken said on learning of the defection. Ironically for him, Tirath was his deputy when he was Speaker of Delhi Assembly from 1993-98. Clearly, a tough battle lies ahead for the Congress and its new general in Delhi.