By Arun Pratap Singh
Garhwal Post Bureau
DEHRADUN, 12 Sep: The Enforcement Directorate’s raids at the residence of Chandan Singh Jeena, former OSD and current personal assistant to former Uttarakhand Chief Minister and senior Congress leader Harish Rawat late Friday night, followed by Rawat’s offer to resign from his organisational posts, can possibly have significant political implications for the Congress in an election year. The ED action has allegedly been carried out in connection with a money-laundering case linked to the 2016 UKSSSC recruitment scam involving the VPDO examination. According to the agency, Rs 52 lakh in cash, gold coins and chains, and 12 luxury watches were recovered from Jeena’s premises.
Soon after the raids, Rawat offered to resign from the executive of the Uttarakhand Pradesh Congress Committee and from his position as a permanent invitee to the Congress Working Committee (CWC), saying that he does not want the controversy surrounding his associate to weaken the Congress campaign against corruption ahead of the Assembly elections.
Rawat’s move assumes significance because recruitment irregularities and paper leaks have remained highly sensitive political issues in Uttarakhand. At the national level, Rahul Gandhi has been aggressively raising the issues of youth employment and paper leaks. Against this backdrop, Rawat appears conscious that his continuation in organisational positions could provide the BJP with an opportunity to target the Congress over the recruitment scam and put the party on the defensive.
By offering to step down, Rawat appears to have attempted a measure of political damage control. He has sought to convey that although the ED action concerns his associate, he is not attached to any organisational position and is willing to put the party’s larger interests above his own. The move is also being seen as an attempt to protect his political standing by projecting himself as a senior party leader taking moral responsibility twithout accepting any wrongdoing on his part.
At the same time, Rawat has also sought to link the ED action directly with the forthcoming elections. Taking a swipe at the Central agencies, he said that agencies tend to knock on doors whenever the elections approach, adding that this time the raid had been conducted at the residence of his associate rather than his own in an apparent attempt to create a particular political narrative. Political analysts claim that he probably intends to portray the action as politically motivated and use the controversy to generate sympathy while questioning the timing of the ED intervention.
The development however can have significant implications for the Congress’s internal politics. The Uttarakhand unit has for long been marked by factional differences, while Rawat has retained considerable influence within the party despite indicating that he may remain somewhat removed from active electoral politics in the coming assembly elections. His offer to give up organisational positions may also provide greater space to rival factions in the party, particularly in matters relating to ticket distribution, campaign planning and organisational strategy. However, the extent to which this affects Rawat’s actual influence will depend on whether the party accepts his offer and how the Congress manages its internal equations in the run-up to the elections.
For the BJP, meanwhile, the ED action provides a potent political issue at a time when the Congress is seeking to make employment, recruitment examinations and corruption major planks of its campaign. The BJP is likely to remind young voters of the recruitment controversies during the 2014-17 Congress government and seek to link the Opposition party with allegations of manipulation and irregularities in recruitment examinations.
The ruling party is also likely to use the ED recoveries to question the Congress’s claims on youth justice and unemployment. Recruitment examination irregularities and paper leaks have strong emotional resonance among Uttarakhand’s unemployed youth. The Pushkar Singh Dhami government has repeatedly highlighted its stringent anti-copying law as evidence of its commitment to cleaning up the recruitment system. The recovery of cash and luxury items from the premises of a close associate of a former Chief Minister from Congress can therefore provide the BJP with fresh ammunition against the Congress, particularly among young voters.
For Rawat, the offer to resign from organisational posts appears to be both a political and defensive strategy. It allows him to distance the party organisation from the controversy while retaining the option of continuing to play a role as a veteran Congress leader. However, with Uttarakhand heading towards another crucial Assembly election, the ED action has complicated the Congress’s political position and is likely to trigger a sharper war of words between the two principal parties in the days ahead.
