JNU ex-student leader Kanhaiya Kumar joins Congress, questions Left ‘rigidity’

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, September 28

Former JNU students’ union chief and CPI leader Kanhaiya Kumar on Tuesday joined the Congress saying he wanted to save the idea of India and believed the grand old party alone could lead the ongoing ideological battle against the BJP.

Kumar has no faith in Communist ideology: CPI

• Kanhaiya Kumar has expelled himself from the CPI, party’s general secretary D Raja said on Tuesday moments after the former JNU leader quit the Left party
• He alleged that Kumar was ‘not truthful’ with the CPI leadership and also not straightforward’ in his demands from the party. TNS

Independent MLA from Gujarat’s Vadgam Jignesh Mevani also “joined in spirit” saying he could not formally take up the AICC membership as he was still a sitting MLA.

“I am with the Congress and will contest next elections on the Congress symbol,” Mevani said. Both leaders met former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi before addressing mediapersons even as sections of party leaders privately expressed unease with Kanhaiya’s joining.

The former JNUSU chief’s past (arrested for sedition in 2016 for raising Azadi slogans on JNU campus after the hanging of Afzal Guru), a section of Congress felt, could hurt Congress’ long term political consolidation plans with the BJP fanning “anti-national rhetoric”.

BJP IT cell chief Amit Malviya tweeted, “On the anniversary of the surgical strike, Congress to admit Kanhaiya and Mevani of ‘Bharat tere tukde honge’ fame. This can’t be a mere coincidence.”

For the Congress, the arrival of young leaders fits into Rahul’s urge to build a “new aggressive party”, a development former minister Manish Tewari compared with times when late PM Indira Gandhi started to veer Leftward.

Citing on Twitter the 1973 book “Communists in Congress: Kumarmanglam Thesis”, Tewari said, “The more things change the more they perhaps remain the same.”

The reference was to late Indira Gandhi who had started to lean towards the Left.

With Kanhaiya’s arrival, the Leftward slant has become evident.

Explaining why he left the CPI, Kanhaiya said, “I think the way it (CPI) is fighting today, we need to increase the speed and break ideological rigidity. Should all parties not mark the birth anniversary of Shaheed Bhagat Singh? If the country is on fire, can we stay off saying we will only save our house? The question of left and right has become irrelevant.”

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