RaGa made special mention of Ayra in his speech in Udaipur
Thursday, 19 May 2022 | Gajendra Singh Negi | Dehradun
The stature of the Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader Yashpal Arya in the state unit of the party has increased after he found a special mention in the speech of former Congress president Rahul Gandhi during the Nav Chintan Sankalp Shivir in Udaipur on Sunday. Gandhi said that Arya who returned back to Congress party after joining BJP had told him that as a Dalit he was humiliated in the BJP. Arya who returned to the Congress party ahead of the assembly elections of 2022 after being a cabinet minister in the BJP government was rewarded by Congress when he was made the CLP leader ignoring the claims of stalwarts like Pritam Singh and Rajendra Bhandari. However the special mention in Gandhi’s speech has enthused Arya’s camp followers in the party who believe that their leader is destined for bigger roles at the state and national levels in the party in future. Their belief stems from the fact that he happens to be the tallest leader of Dalit community in the state and after having played its cards on Brahmin leaders such as Narayan Dutt Tiwari and Vijay Bahuguna and Rajput in Harish Rawat, the grand old party can project a Dalit face as its leader in the next assembly elections. Interestingly ahead of this year’s assembly elections the former chief minister Harish Rawat had expressed his desire that he wants to see a Dalit becoming the CM of Uttarakhand. It is pertinent to mention here that Uttarakhand has 19 per cent of Scheduled Caste (SC) population.
Political observers feel that by narrating the experience of the Arya in the BJP, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi tried to hit two birds with one stone. By evoking the Dalit sentiments Gandhi tried to woo back the community which once used to be the vote bank of the party. He also tried to send a message to the Congressmen across the country that the turncoats are not respected in the BJP. In recent times the Congress party has witnessed defection of many senior leaders to the BJP.
Some leaders of the Congress party believe that the central leadership of the party can give a ticket to Arya from the Almora- Pithoragarh (Reserved) Lok Sabha seat in the elections of 2024. Arya is learnt to be inclined to contest the Lok Sabha seat and leave his Bajpur assembly seat for his son Sanjeev. In the recent assembly elections Sanjeev Arya- who too had come back to Congress with his father- faced defeat at the hands of Sarita Arya of BJP in Nainital assembly constituency.
The media in charge of Uttarakhand Congress Rajiv Mehrishi said that Arya is a seasoned and very popular leader. He said that Arya was the Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) president during the 2009 Lok Sabha elections when the party won in all five parliamentary seats of the state.
