Congress returns with a bang, new CM, full house

Khandu, accompanied by outgoing CM Tuki, met Governor Tathagata Roy in Itanagar Saturday noon, immediately after a crucial CLP meeting attended by all 44 Congress MLAs had elected him as the new leader. “It is up to the honorable governor now to fix the time for swearing-in,” Khandu, who has become the youngest CM in the country at 36, said.

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The floor test for Tuki, who was on Wednesday reinstated as CM by the Supreme Court, has now become redundant, as he himself said paving the way for Khandu. He has put in his papers.

READ: Arunachal Pradesh has a lesson for both BJP and Congress

“There is no revolt, dissidence or difference of opinion within the Congress party now. All (those who had supported Kalikho Pul) have come back to the party fold. I have stepped down in the larger interest of the Congress party and the state and made way for a new CLP leader,” Tuki said. Two Independents who had sided with the rebels have also extended support to Khandu, he said.

Tuki described the return of the rebels to the Congress as “egg on the face of the BJP”, adding it had tried all options to keep the Congress out in the state. “The BJP tried its best, till the last moment, but our legislators realised the truth and came back to the party fold,” Tuki said.

READ: How the Congress staged a coup and won back the rebels

Calling the crisis over, Khandu thanked Sonia and Rahul Gandhi. “The credit goes to Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, who have guided us to come to a final solution acceptable to all. We have discussed our issues, sunk our differences and arrived at a unanimous decision,” Khandu said, emerging from the Raj Bhavan.

The Indian Express had first reported that the Congress had a plan B, which involved selecting a new leader in place of Tuki so as to crush the rebellion in the state unit and bring back those who had supported Pul. The rebels in fact started trickling back to the party from Friday afternoon, and Khandu even had dinner with Tuki late on Friday evening.

READ: Pema Khandu stakes claim to form govt, will become India’s youngest CM

Tuki confirmed this, telling The Sunday Express, “Many of them (rebels) were in touch with me for the past few days, and while they started coming back in groups of five and six, finally all of them turned up for the crucial CLP meeting today (Saturday) morning to express solidarity.”

The virtual coup of sorts pulled off by the Congress in Arunachal was actually in the works for the last one and a half months, with the decisive push coming in the last 48 hours.

Working behind the scenes were senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal and Arunachal East MP Ninong Ering. While Ering constantly engaged the breakaway MLAs, Sibal softened Tuki in the last 48 hours and made him understand the need to make way for another leader in the interest of the party.

READ: Lessons from Uttarakhand and Arunachal: What court orders on Central rule say

While Tuki proposed the name of Khandu as the new CLP leader at Saturday’s meeting, Pul too stood up and backed him, an MLA said. With all 44 Congress MLAs backing him, Khandu now has the support of them plus two Independents in the 60-member House, which has an effective strength of 58, barring the Speaker. The BJP has 11 MLAs.

A Buddhist by faith, Khandu is the eldest of five sons and two daughters of Dorjee Khandu, the former CM who was killed in a chopper crash in May 2011. A graduate of Hindu College of Delhi University, Khandu is a two-time MLA, from Mukto LAC in Tawang district.

He held the Water Resources and Tourism portfolio in the Jarbom Gamlin government, and then Rural Work, Tourism and Civil Aviation in the Nabam Tuki government. Having fallen out with Tuki, he had resigned from the Cabinet in October 2015 and joined the Pul camp.

READ: Congress deals big blow to BJP dreams in Arunachal Pradesh, North East

Sources said that it was sometime in June, long before the Supreme Court’s favourable verdict, that Congress leaders in the state sensed that all was not well in the Pul camp. Both Khandu and Chowna Mein, who was a deputy chief minister in the Pul cabinet, were unhappy with what they called the “authoritarian style” of Pul and his keenness to join the BJP. Incidentally, his authoritarian style had been one of the charges hurled at Tuki by the rebels before deserting him.

The rebels were clearly told that they could come back anytime. Contact was established with even Pul, but he was keen to join the BJP, sources said.
While Sonia was kept in the loop, she reportedly chose to maintain an arm’s length from the negotiations. Recently, both Khandu and Mein issued public statements indicating their unhappiness in the Pul camp. The Congress interlocutors then told them that they would have to decide who could be the new CM between them.

The talks gained urgency after the Supreme Court verdict. Even while the MLAs were in Guwahati, put up in a five-star hotel by the BJP, they were freely talking to Congress leaders.

Once it became clear that the MLAs needed an assurance that Tuki would step down, Sibal, who was his lawyer in the Supreme Court, convinced him that in the interest of the party he would have to make way for someone else. Sources said Tuki was told about the plan a day after the verdict. He agreed. Ering and others remained in touch with Mein.

Party sources insisted that Khandu was a choice of the rebels, with Mein himself proposing his name Thursday night. “The name came from them. And they are not rebels, they are all Congressmen,” a senior leader said. On Friday morning, the matter was taken to Sonia, who gave the political clearance. The message was relayed to the rebel leaders, who left Guwahati and reached Itanagar in the evening.

Through the night, Congress leaders were anxious and kept their fingers crossed knowing well that the BJP camp could plan a counter. But things for the Congress, for once, went according to script.

Slamming the BJP, Sibal said Saturday, “This shows the immaturity of the BJP. One, they produced instability in a border state. Secondly, they got themselves exposed both politically and legally. And thirdly, what did they gain from this, except from a short-sighted attempt to have a Congress-mukt Northeast? It is very unfortunate that the BJP is not thinking about the country but thinking of itself… and in fact destabilising states which are critical to the security of India. See what’s happening in Kashmir. What happened in Arunachal Pradesh. They are trying to destabilise Himachal… I don’t know what is going to happen in Punjab. They have no capacity to govern in a positive, constructive way. And that is really going to be their downfall.”