With old Congressmen already sidelined or forced to quit the party ever since Priyanka Gandhi Vadra took charge of the party affairs in Uttar Pradesh, leaders who deserted Bahujan Samaj Party to join the Congress have once again been given prominence over the old warriors.
The appointments have come months after Ajay Lallu resigned as UP Congress Committee chief following the party's crushing defeat in the assembly elections held earlier in March this year. Congress managed to win only 2 two seats in the UP Assembly elections of 2022.
An aggressive campaign by Congress general secretary Priyanka Vadra Gandhi and even her decision to give 40 per cent of tickets to women failed to attract the masses in UP. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections too, the Congress had bagged just one seat and that too of its president Sonia Gandhi (Rae Bareli). Her son and former Congress president Rahul Gandhi was defeated by senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader and Union Minister Smriti Irani from Congress bastion Amethi.
The UPCC chief’s post was lying vacant since party president Sonia Gandhi asked the state chiefs of five states to resign after defeat in elections. Congress faced a debacle in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa, Manipur and Punjab assembly elections.
The Indian National Congress on Saturday appointed Brijlal Khabri, a Dalit, as chief of its Uttar Pradesh unit, besides appointing half a dozen more leaders as regional heads in Uttar Pradesh.
Khabri had quit the BSP in 2016, alleging sale of tickets for money, and subsequently joined the Congress. He is a former Member of Parliament from Jalaun constituency, a seat he won in 1999 as a member of BSP. He contested the UP Assembly election in 2022 from Mahrauni seat in Lalitpur while his wife Urmila Devi contested from Orai seat both lost their deposits with just 4,334 and 4,650 votes, respectively.
All India Congress Committee president Sonia Gandhi also appointed six regional heads in the UPCC. The regional heads are Naseemuddin Siddiqui, Ajai Rai, Virendra Chaudhary, Nakul Dubey, Anil Yadav and Yogesh Dixit.
Besides Khabri, Nakul Dubey joined Congress just a few months back after he was shunted out from the BSP by Mayawati for anti-party activities. Not just Dubey, BSP old guard Naseemuddin Siddiqui, who too was removed by Mayawati before he joined Congress a few years back, also got favour from the Congress president who appointed him as a regional president.
Anil Yadav, who was also once in BSP before he joined the Samajwadi Party and finally came into Congress fold, was also made regional president of UPCC. While Dubey is new to the Congress, both Siddiqui and Yadav have contested on Congress ticket but lost their deposits.
Reacting to the appointments, a former Congress president claimed that the future of the party could be easily gauged from the fact that the high command had now lost trust on party veterans and was giving weightage to those who were shunted out from their own party (read BSP), had failed to ensure their own victory and even lost their deposits in the last assembly election.
He further questioned how the old warriors would work under those leaders who joined Congress recently and had no following even in their own assembly constituencies leave the entire state or region.
“We are criticising the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) but the model for appointing regional heads of UPCC has been taken from the RSS which has the old tradition of appointing prantiya adhyaksh in their outfit,” the leader added.
