New Delhi: Congress chief Sonia Gandhi on Saturday chose a Dalit leader Brij Lal Khabri as the new Uttar Pradesh unit head, in a strong message to the community which had been a solid vote bank of the grand old party. Over the past three decades, Congress lost its traditional Dalit vote bank to the BSP.
Though both the Congress and the BSP have been marginalised in UP over the past few years, the grand old party is now eyeing to benefit from a fading BSP. In 2017, Congress had only 7 seats while the BSP had 19 in the 403-member UP assembly. In 2022, Congress has just 2 seats and the BSP just 1.
Brij Lal Khabri, who is currently the AICC secretary in charge of Bihar, left the BSP in 2016 to join the Congress. Sonia Gandhi also appointed six regional in-charge, who will assist the new state unit chief in managing the large and politically crucial state. Interestingly, two of them Nasimuddin Siddiqui and Nakul Dube, are also BSP imports who had joined the Congress over the past years.
Siddiqui, a former minister in the Mayawati government, had moved to the Congress in 2018, a year before the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, while Dube had shifted to the grand old party in May this year after the BSP performed poorly in the assembly elections. After the 2022 assembly polls, Sonia had asked then state unit chief Ajay Kumar Lallu to resign and the appointment of a new person got delayed due to various reasons.
Though the Congress has sent a strong message to the Dalits through the fresh appointments on Saturday, party insiders aver that restrengthening the party in UP is an uphill task. “There are many challenges but we will take them head-on. My first priority would be to unite the party and make the organization stronger,” Khabri told ETV Bharat.
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According to him, Congress has an opportunity to gain from the BSP’s decline. “The Dalits will come back to us. The BSP is finished. I will mobilize the support base that I had in the BSP and will regroup the Congress,” Khabri said. “I will live up to the trust that Sonia Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and Rahul Gandhi have reposed in me,” he said.
Asked how he plans to take on the ruling BJP and the main opposition SP, the new UP Congress chief said, “The BJP wins because of social polarization. If the 14 per cent Muslim supporters of the SP are taken away, their condition would be worse than BSP. We will fight both,” said Khabri. UP is important for Congress as it is the home state of the Nehru-Gandhi family.
Sonia Gandhi is the sole party MP from Rae Bareli in the Lok Sabha as Rahul Gandhi lost his stronghold Amethi in 2019. In April this year, Rahul had blamed Mayawati saying she had refused an alliance with the Congress in UP which had given a walkover to the BJP. In the same breadth, Rahul had hailed BSP founder Kanshi Ram saying he fought for the rights of the community.
The move clearly aimed at gaining traction among the BSP’s support base which was allegedly withering. Since then, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra had been managing the northern state as AICC in charge and took several steps to regroup the organization. Priyanka had roped in Timkhui MLA Ajay Kumar Lallu as the state unit chief and made Rampur Khas MLA Aradhana Mishra the CLP leader in the Assembly.
Priyanka, aided by Lallu and Aradhana, led several protests against the Yogi Adityanath government over various issues including law and order, crimes against women, justice for Dalits, dues of sugar cane farmers and jobs for the youth. During the Covid pandemic, she even tried to organize 1000 buses for the thousands of migrant workers who had been forced to walk on foot as the nation witnessed a lockdown.
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However, the state government rejected her offer and did not allow the buses saying the vehicles lacked proper documents. Aradhana Mishra, the daughter of Rajya Sabha MP Pramod Tewari, was made the CLP for a second term by Priyanka, who has now made the other MLA Virendra Chaudhary as one of the regional in charge under Khabri.
Besides Nasimuddin Siddiqui, Nakul Dube and Virendra Chaudhary, the other three regional in charge are former MLA Ajay Rai, Yogesh Dixit and Anil Yadav. Rai is a former MLA from Pindra in Varanasi, the parliamentary constituency of PM Modi. He had fought the 2014 Lok Sabha elections against Modi from Varanasi.
Dixit is an old party hand and a Gandhi family loyalist Yadav is from Itawa in western UP. Sources said the finalization of the new team had been discussed over the past weeks keeping in mind the various caste equations needed in UP where the choice was to be made between a Brahmin, Thakur, OBC or Dalit leader to steer the Congress, which once ruled the state.
