Rawat tweet brings unrest in Cong to fore

Jotirmay Thapliyal

Tribune News Service

Dehradun, January 31

A tweet by former Chief Minister Harish Rawat in which he publicly revealed that he was kept in dark about Congress programmes in the state has yet again revealed that all was not well in Uttarakhand Congress.

One of the tallest Congress leaders of Uttarakhand Harish Rawat under whose leadership the Congress fought 2017 Assembly elections in the state faced his biggest political setback when his party lost the polls miserably. To make matters worse, he himself lost from both the Assembly seats he contested.

The Congress poll debacle saw Congress Central leaders bring in a change of guard in the state replacing state Congress president Kishore Upadhyay with Pritam Singh, who has been successfully winning elections from his Chakrata Assembly seat ever since formation of the Uttarakhand. Since his elevation, Pritam Singh slowly and steadily has been trying to strengthen his hold over party organisation. This has led to bit of uneasiness both on the part of Harish Rawat and Kishore Upadhyay.

The recent Congress Jan Chetan rally in the capital Dehradun has brought to the fore uneasy relationship particularly between Pritam Singh and Harish Rawat. Rawat, who did not participate in the rally, alleged that he was not informed about the rally programme. Taking the tweet route, Rawat, though congratulated Congress workers for staging a successful Jan Chetan rally, also spoke in the complaining tone about his absence in the rally alleging that he would have participated had the party assigned some role for him in the rally.

The state Congress president was taken aback by former chief minister’s tweet and even went to an extent of asserting that he doubted as to whether that tweet had come from Harish Rawat.

Interestingly, Kishore Upadhyay too has been constantly sharing platform with state agitation linked organisations, Left parties and other forums voicing the cause of permanent capital status of Gairsain and other core issues, which the Congress has even failed to clearly spell out his mind on and thus keeping a distance from his very own party.

Uttarakhand Congress unrest comes at a time when local bodies poll are round the corner and the party is under tremendous pressure to perform in order to erase its last year’s poorest-ever Assembly poll performances when it just won 11 out of 70 Assembly seats in the state.

Not informed about rally: Ex-CM 

• Harish Rawat, who did not participate in the rally, alleged that he was not informed about the programme. 
• Taking the tweet route, Rawat, though congratulated Congress workers for staging a successful Jan Chetan rally, also spoke in the complaining tone about his absence in the rally
• He alleged that he would have participated had the party assigned some role for him.