Set to be saffron party’s Dalit face

Tribune News Service

Deepender Deswal

Hisar, January 20

With the entry of former Congress MP from Sirsa Ashok Tanwar, the BJP has tried to balance the caste dynamics in the state unit of the party ahead of the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections.

Tanwar, who was the Haryana Pradesh Congress Committee president from 2014-2019, and left the AAP to start his fresh innings with the BJP, is set to be a prominent Dalit face for the party.

Sources close to Tanwar indicated that he could be the party’s candidate from any of the two reserved Lok Sabha constituencies — Sirsa or Ambala — in the coming General Election. While he had represented Sirsa as Congress MP from 2009-2014, he had lost the next two successive elections (2014 and 2019).

Though Tanwar emerged as a strong Dalit face when he was “sent” to Sirsa, reportedly with the blessings of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in 2009, he had an internal tussle with Congress leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda, and left the Congress in 2019. As the state Congress president, he had embarked on a “pad yatra” across Haryana and tried to nurture his following across constituencies.

However, after his exit from the Congress, he faced political instability as he supported the JJP, and then, leaned towards the INLD, joined the Trinamool Congress briefly before landing in the AAP, where he held the second position in the party hierarchy in the Haryana unit.

Political observers have termed his decision to join the BJP as “surprising” because he was ideologically far away from the BJP. “More than himself, Tanwar’s entry in the BJP will benefit the party in Haryana.

At present, the BJP doesn’t have a strong face for the Dalit segment. Banwari Lal is the only minister from the SC community, and there is no impressive leader in the Ambala Lok Sabha segment, which has been lying vacant after the demise of MP Ratan Lal Kataria. Moreover, Tanwar is a good alternative in Sirsa, where he has a significant presence,” said a BJP leader.

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