The Congress has hit a new low in leadership and ideological direction by handing Uttar Pradesh, the nation's ultimate political battleground, to Rajendra Pal Gautam. This baffling appointment exposes a deep strategic bankruptcy within the party's high command.
Gautam is neither a political veteran nor has had a long innings in the Congress. He is yet to complete two years in the party and is already holding the command of Uttar Pradesh, besides being the chairman of the SC department of the Congress.
Probably no other leader in the Congress has had such a phenomenal and spontaneous rise as Gautam, even after having to leave the Aam Aadmi Party under controversial circumstances. He resigned from the AAP in September 2024, just before the assembly elections, and joined the Congress the same month. In June next year, he was appointed chairman of the important Scheduled Castes Department of the All-India Congress Committee and within a year, he was appointed in-charge of the state of Uttar Pradesh, just ahead of crucial 2027 assembly elections.
Two most important things demand mention here. Why someone as junior as Gautam, both in the party and from the point of his overall political career, was given the charge of UP. Second, the circumstances under which he was made to resign as minister from the Delhi AAP government. There should have been a background check before handing over the most important state of the country to him.
Gautam was a minister in the second AAP government in Delhi. On October 5, 2022 he attended a mass conversion event of Dalits to Buddhism in New Delhi. Thousands of Dalits adopted Buddhism at the event which is fine as everyone in the country has the right to embrace, adopt and follow any religion s/he wants to.
But what happened at the event was the display of outright hatred and hostility towards Hinduism and Hindu deities. At the mass conversion, the attendees recited 22 vows of Dr BR Ambedkar that he had taken at the time of his leading a mass conversion to Buddhism. The vow specifically mentioned that they would not worship the Hindu deities, including Brahma, Vishnu Mahesh, Rama and Krishna.
This led to widespread outrage and uproar. The AAP government asked him to resign, which he did on October 9. The AAP, which at that time was aggressively campaigning in Gujarat, was put on the back foot by the BJP, using Gautam’s mass conversion event against the party and describing it as an “anti-Hindu” party.
Imagine the Congress party raising the issue of embezzlement in the donations of Ram Temple in Ayodhya with Gautam as the party in charge. The same Gautam, who participated in an event where the participants vowed never to worship many Hindu deities, including Lord Rama, whose name was specially mentioned at the event.
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Two years prior to the conversion event, Gautam had embarrassed his party and the government in 2020 when he shared a fake video of an Indian army jawan alleging caste discrimination by a senior officer. The army clarified that it was a fake and an old video, which had been circulated by the enemies. Gautam deleted that video, but not without cutting a sorry figure.
As if the Congress had dearth of leaders that it had to pick up an outsider, who is in the party just for two years and more so, after his options in the AAP had been closed down. Since he was made to resign after the controversial conversion event and had no future in the AAP, he waited for the assembly to complete its tenure and resigned in September 2024 when less than six months for next elections were left, so that he did not need to face fresh elections. He joined the Congress and landed up with the chairmanship of the SC department of the AICC within a few months.
Gautam replaced the party general secretary Avinash Pande as the UP in-charge. The import of the message that the Congress wants to send ahead of the UP election has not been lost on anyone. The party wants to play a submissive second fiddle to the alliance partner Samajwadi Party and that explains the reason that it did not appoint any strong or senior leader as the state in charge.
Earlier, Priyanka Gandhi was also general secretary in charge of UP. But that was before the party struck an alliance with the Samajwadi Party.
Since the SP does not have much stakes among the Dalits, the Congress appointed Gautam, a Dalit as the party in-charge. An OBC or a Muslim would obviously have irked the SP and its leader Akhilesh Yadav.
It is strange and surprising how the Congress could ignore Gautam’s background before deputing him to UP. The Congress cannot expect to make any inroads into the non-Dalit castes with Gautam at the helm, whose credentials vis-à-vis the non-Dalits, particularly the general castes, rather the Hindu religion itself, are quite well known. Although Gautam had clarified after the conversion event that he was not against any religion, such clarifications hardly convince anyone.
Ideally, the Congress should have handed over the responsibility of Uttar Pradesh to some senior influential leader, preferably former chief minister like Bhupinder Singh Hooda or Ashok Gehlot. In fact, the party should appoint at least three general secretaries dividing the work in UP into three parts.
It is not that all this may not have occurred to those at the helm, but there is that element of surrender and resignation before the alliance partners or those, whom the Congress believes, can challenge or oust the BJP, even if they are not the alliance partners. The Congress is repeating what it did in West Bengal. Whatever its strategy, the party could have chosen a better and a senior leader to look after Uttar Pradesh instead of someone like Gautam.
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