Gajendra Singh Negi/ Dehradun
The incident involving an imposter claiming to be the personal assistant of leader of opposition (LoP) in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi has not only shaken the Uttarakhand Congress but has also exposed the fissure lines within the party.
The conman Gaurav Kumar who was arrested by police on the complaint of self-proclaimed activist and political worker Bhawna Pandey is learnt to have told the police that many senior leaders of Uttarakhand Congress were in touch with him. A conspiracy theory circulating in the political circles is that some of the leaders of the party were in touch with Kumar and had even paid him a hefty sum of money to remove Ganesh Godiyal from the position of the Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) president.
In her press conference held at Uttaranchal Press Club on Tuesday, Pandey claimed that Kumar influenced her by calling senior leaders Harish Rawat, Harak Singh Rawat, Ganesh Godiyal and Yashpal Arya simultaneously on the other phone.
Though Pandey is not a member of the Congress party her connections with senior leaders of Uttarakhand Congress are well known and the incident has exposed the power game going inside the Uttarakhand Congress. Godiyal was appointed by the Congress high command to the post of the president of the State unit in November last year. The party high command then handed over the position of chairman of the election campaign committee to Pritam Singh and chairman of the election management committee to Harak Singh Rawat. With these decisions, the party appeared to come in the election mode for the crucial Vidhan Sabha elections of 2027.
However, the recent decision of former chief minister Harish Rawat to take a break from politics and the furore in the party over non-inclusion of some senior leaders in the party brought the internal dissension in the party to the fore. The internal bickering is said to be so severe that the party has not declared its new State executive yet. The experts opine that in such a situation, the hope of the Congress party to return back to the power in Uttarakhand after a gap of ten years would not materialise.
