BURNING ISSUES CONTINUE TO SINGE CONGRESS
By Robin Shukla
In a surprising development at the beginning of this month, Delhi-based channel Nazar TV aired a clip of Jayaprakash Shetty, a feisty young Congressman who refers to himself as Aam Aadmi Ka Sipahi taking on president of the Mumbai Regional Congress Committee, Sanjay Nirupam, accusing him of mucking up the candidate selection process for the forthcoming Mumbai civic elections. The contents were sensational enough for channel owner and MD, SK Chaudhari to himself come on screen to present the video.
This happened in the backdrop of most newspapers already carrying reports of serious fissures within the Mumbai Congress with various stalwarts of the party openly talking to the media about their disconnect with the Mumbai president. Much has now been subordinated for reasons of political expediency, with contentious issues being put on the back burner. But will this fractured truce prevail even after the hustings, when results will be out?
In his video, Jayaprakash Shetty, JP to friends, raises pertinent questions about ills that allegedly plague the Mumbai Congress today. And he claims to know them first-hand because he has been actively working for the party for the past 22 years, starting with the Youth Congress where he was in-charge of training the cadre and instilling in them the confidence for the party and nationhood.
But if subsequent videos showing him venting spleen and angrily burning the Congress flag are any indication, the motivation he instilled in others has all but disappeared from within him, making way for a burning anger against the perceived injustices within the party which he says many are talking of but are doing nothing to address. He continues to express his disillusionment on social media and says people are afraid to put their ‘likes’ for understandable reasons.
Tellingly, events unfolding on February 3, saw supporters of former Union minister and MP Gurudas Kamat and Sanjay Nirupam exchange blows in a public fracas over seat allotment, and even later when the manifesto was released, underscoring the polarization within the Congress party and its resultant ills that JP was talking about in his video.
Robin Shukla spoke to JP who had much to say and react to when asked about his equations with his party.
RS: I cannot say that I like to see abusive posts and shocking videos. What were the triggers that got you to get so drastic without fear of repercussions or police complaints?
JP: Not a single Congress person will have had the temerity or the guts to do what I did. If it was any other political party, my house would have been stoned, my face would have been blackened and I would have been pasted in public. Not a single Congressman has called me up to ask me why I am doing this. That is the way the organization is today because there are very few real people and nobody is concerned with the fate of the party. They are an unmotivated and disinterested lot and lack the fire seen in those belonging to other parties.
The response is really the opposite of what I wanted, which was to get through to the organization. With the burning of the flag, I just burned cloth hoping to reach Rahul Gandhi. I have tried to speak to the media but when they hear my take on Sanjay Nirupam they find some excuse to walk away. I then learned that it boils down to paymasters so I am searching for somebody really genuine and clean enough to carry my story. It has been a long wait and you must accept that sometimes you and the truth can go unheard.
RS: Still, one can never justify such nasty tone.
JP: I personally don’t feel good about the videos but I have had to do so because I too have my own responsibility as a Congress person. Only a few are opening up while all the others in Mumbai are lumping it and only grumbling like cowards in private.
RS: You were on a self-imposed sabbatical. What made you feel like coming back and taking up the cudgels on your own behalf and that of others, assuming they are okay with it?
JP: It all goes back to the 2014 general elections and Nirupam’s behaviour from even before that. He was already arrogant, he was already behaving like a supremo, being very choosy about who’d be around him and who’d get responsibility. He himself has risen on the status of his wife who is Raj Thackeray’s cousin. Luck has favoured him in terms of connections and money needed for politics so he can influence everything: media, manpower, the organization, its leaders. It has to stop somewhere. Further, wherever All India Congress Committee’s general secretary Mohan Prakash has gone the party has lost miserably. Nirupam himself has been a loser by several lakh votes. I have already alerted the party high command that the Mumbai president and the general secretary teaming up is detrimental to the party’s fortunes and prospects. Can business tycoons run a party that serves the poorest man in the nation better than our stalwarts who have the requisite experience and accommodative skills? Nirupam’s experience barely spans ten years, that too with more of debacles than anything else. I could not merely sit by and watch like many of the others, after all I have been calling myself Aam Aadmi Ka Sipahi.
RS: Isn’t there too much angst against Nirupam?
JP: I think he has only changed parties and brought nothing with him when joining the Congress. He does not even have Shiv Sena ideology because being a shiv sainik means being powerful, it means self-reliance, it means fighting for yourself, fighting for the cause of the Marathi manoos. Which of these qualities I have stated right now does anyone see in Nirupam? He can never imbibe any values because he always believes an individual is above the organization and that individual is Sanjay Nirupam. If you are watching TV and reading news I am not the only one saying something like this.
RS: You have an alternative vision for a leader?
JP: He has lost out on even the basics. If you want to be a true leader you have to be a good accommodator, because the Congress is all about accommodating. There can be two people in the race for tickets. If they qualify one gets the ticket and the other gets an important post in the organization. This is how the leadership keeps both happy and the leadership requires two teams anyway because it is not possible to stay in touch with the masses single-handedly.
RS: Not everybody can be placated with a ticket. How can you work that out since many who are rebelling today are those who wanted to contest?
JP: If I were president, I would have declared a list of the probable candidates six months in advance with single names on most constituencies and say these are the candidates of the party. We meet to have a consensus and in 15 days finalize, so people can reconcile or even move away to another party or decide to fight as independents, no boundaries to ambitions and no questions, and everybody’s perceptions will be respected. Consensus would be what the majority thinks. Mumbai Congress president sitting with every ward and speaking to grassroots level workers and then gauging and having a panel of judges to come to a conclusion and if there are two names in the discussion we ask them to work together and decide between themselves as to who is going to contest – and one will get the ticket and the other will get an important position in the organization.
RS: You believe it will help to have things clear-cut six months ahead. Will that stop the infighting?
JP: People who are going to fight as independents will fight whether you declare early or late but the candidate going for elections will be well prepared because he has the guarantee that he or she has got the ticket six months in advance and has the trusts of the president and the party. I am right in this because some 2,200 persons were vying for tickets and by the time they know they have lost the campaigning is already starting. It is too late to reconcile and overcome disappointment well enough to campaign for another who has got the ticket that you desired to have in the first place. On February 13, Nirupam has expelled 25 Congress persons who opted to fight as independents. Many turned dissidents not because they have not got tickets but because they have realised Nirupam was using them. They are themselves to blame as they were opportunists who could be on any ruling side.
RS: Was there not a fair and proper interviewing process in place for seats in Mumbai?
JP: How could a rank outsider like former Haryana CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda, appointed as observer for the BMC elections by Rahul Gandhi, make any assessment without inputs from Nirupam who remained seated beside him throughout the intensive interviewing and vetting process? In Nagpur, a disappointed aspirant threw ink at former CM Ashok Chavan.
RS: You seem to have it all worked out. How does that help the masses?
JP: I have been a trainer in the Congress for the last 10 years at the national level and have been a speaker in around 10 to 15 states. You need to read the signs constantly. Remember, we were surprised when a whole government, a Chief Minister with 43 legislators defected to the BJP in Arunachal Pradesh.
RS: How does one gain the trust of the people, given that Congress is seen as synonymous with corruption by many?
JP: The BJP has proved to be equally corrupt in many aspects and even during this awful demonetization, all the 36 people caught with hundreds of crores were BJP netas. The BJP has failed on all fronts, be it prices of fruits, vegetables, grains, and other essential, petrol and diesel and even LPG, farmers’ suicides, etc. There is now a spy racket in MP and some sex racket in Gujarat that they are embroiled in. So the Congress could have resurfaced if it alerted the masses to this. If I was entrusted with the responsibility, I would have used padyatras to reach the masses and within one year I would have a team in Mumbai Congress up to the level of one man having the responsibility of only 10 houses for polling and getting that party’s message across personally ‘One man for 10 houses’ is the organization I would have.
RS: Do I see you nursing an ambition?
JP: And why not? I would be the most low-profile Mumbai president in the 130-year history of the party. I travel by public transport. I am employed as a trainer by an established company. My committee would always have members from the roots. If there are 10 general secretaries, eight of them will have never been ward presidents. Elevating the spirit of the worker, creating that environment that everybody is approachable is what brings people to vote for you. Nothing else. Election goodies are doled out by everybody, even the party with the weakest prospects does that, but it is too late and all in vain. You would see me as president knocking on the door of every Cong person who has left the party asking him to come back home. A few originals from the other parties would also walk in.
RS: You are out of the current reckoning. So where does that leave you?
JP: As a common Indian citizen, and as a Congress person who has striven for the party I have rights to ambition. I suddenly realise that Sanjay Nirupam denying me a ticket has made me aim for Member of Parliament. I could become a strong contender for the next parliamentary elections for a ticket from the Congress party. Nirupam will be a loser again and he know it. The party does too. I would tell you my merit. In age I am 15 years younger than him and in qualification too. I have fluency in six languages while he may have in two? And I can garner the support of my Bunt community which stands by me. I am a proud Bunt, and could beat an incumbent Gopal Shetty with a good margin.
RS: Putting the Congress party above all else like the other dissenters, will you help in the campaigning?
JP: Much as I hate to be part of a sinking ship and feel like staying away from the campaigning, I would happily stand by president of Regional Mahila Congress Sheetal Mhatre, Vinay Patil and of course, Shiva Shetty. In the meanwhile, I have been busy with the campaigning in UP. Thank you and Peoples Media Today for speaking to a regular Congress worker for a change.
Is there any element of truth to all that Jayaprakash Shetty has stated, and also taking into account that several Congress veterans have opted to move away from the Congress after decades of loyalty to the party?
The disagreement and distrust between Gurudas Kamat and Sanjay Nirupam has been a well-documented situation much before Kamat put in his papers on June 7, last year. He notably had stayed away during the April visit to Mumbai of Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi setting rumour mills spinning, and versions were many.
Kamat was Congress General Secretary and Gujarat unit in-charge when he resigned from the party ‘purely on personal grounds,’ though differences between Kamat and Nirupam have often led to much publicised factional infighting, the latest one being blows exchanged when the election manifesto was released.
A very unhealthy trend in the Congress, any way you look at it, though a wisecrack said, ‘It was like a former captain refusing to bat under a rookie player who has taken over, but where else can there be power politics if not in a political party?’
Senior-most leaders from the Congress, including Sonia Gandhi’s aide Ahmed Patel, made several efforts to persuade Kamat to rethink on his resignation even as there was no evidence that Nirupam received as much as a rap on the wrist, leading some to rue that he unfairly had the ear and favour of Rahul Gandhi and that was the reason for his belligerence.
It would be pertinent to point out that Kamat has his own brand equity and standing, having won five times from the Mumbai North East constituency and has represented the party in the Lok Sabha in 1984, 1991, 1998, 2004 and 2009 before losing in the 2014 general elections. Compared to him, Nirupam is much the proverbial greenhorn. Though Kamat stayed on with the party, he remained conspicuously absent from the candidate selection committee and did not attend the several crucial meetings called by Nirupam. After refusing to be a part of the campaign machinery, he has since relented and is on the road, citing ‘mounting pressure from candidates and party workers.’
Among other figureheads who had expressed desire to stay away from campaigning were former chief minister and like Nirupam, an ex-Shiv sainik, Narayan Rane, former ministers Naseem Khan and Kripa Shankar Singh.
It may be recalled that Minority department chairman Nizamuddin Rayeen along with several hundred Congress workers quit the party on January 21 this year, saying, “For 32 years I served the party and in the past several years tried to bring the community closer to the party. But now I am leaving it because some communal elements with deep-rooted hatred for the Muslims don’t want me to remain vocal and assertive.”
The very next day, former MLA Krishna Hegde quit the Congress to join the BJP saying, “Those who worked against the party in the Assembly elections are being favoured while loyalists are sidelined. If the party does not want my services, it is better that I quit.”
Hegde, who was elected to the Assembly in 2009 and lost in the 2014 elections, has squarely blamed Sanjay Nirupam’s ignoring of loyalists as his reason for leaving the party.
A week later, Congress corporator and former leader of the Opposition in the BMC, Devendra Amberkar, quit to join the Shiv Sena on January 29. Openly airing his reasons, Amberkar said, “Due to Sanjay Nirupam I’m leaving the party he is trying to enforce his rules and regulation on the senior party members. Nirupam will destroy entire Mumbai Congress party. Sanjay Nirupam’s dadagiri tactics in the party were not ending. I felt that he was trying to trample upon the Marathi manoos and their thoughts in every way. Therefore getting fed up of all this I decided to move on from the party. It feels bad to leave the Congress considering I have contested civic elections with a Congress ticket from since 1998.” It is learnt that Amberkar was being denied a ticket from the ward in Andheri where he has won from in the past and has been socially active in during festivals and other important events, and was instead being asked to contest from Dindoshi in Goregaon.
Apart from these there are numerous other Congress names that jumped like rats off a sinking ship much before the current drama caught public attention, notable among them being former MLA Ramesh Singh Thakur and current Congress corporator Sagar Thakur who joined the BJP during the first week of October 2016. Thakur had earlier represented Kandivali assembly which is part of Nirupam’s former Lok Sabha constituency. In his written statement, Thakur maintained, ‘There is dictatorial attitude at all levels. The current city president is ignoring the senior and loyal party activists and attempts are being made to create factionalism. In my constituency, appointments of local office-bearers are made without consultation with me and other senior leaders. It has led to a lot of anger among the activists.’
On his part, Nirupam has countered all allegations about his bias and high-handedness by stating, “I am not at all a part of the candidate selection procedure and it is all being handled at the district level by former MPs, MLAs and district presidents. Therefore it seems like someone is purposely asking my name to be taken by those who are leaving the Congress party and joining other parties.”
Still, there cannot be smoke without fire and thanks to the bickering and infighting, the Congress is seen as a floundering ship, making its way with a mutiny on board, its tattered sails caught in its own crosswinds. How safe a harbour and how big an electoral berth it will dock into will be determined right after results will be out in Mumbai and in many parts of the country, including major cities of Maharashtra.