Congress believes in upholding family "ties"

LUCKNOW, May 30: Wife, daughter, son, daughter-in-law. Anything goes for a seat in the Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee. The list of UPCC m...

LUCKNOW, May 30: Wife, daughter, son, daughter-in-law. Anything goes for a seat in the Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee. The list of UPCC members, which was released yesterday, is flooded with relatives of party heavyweights.

Sheila Dixit’s two kin; four members of the late Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna’s family; five relatives of Lokpati Tripathi; four members of the late Lal Bahadur Shastri’s family; seven kin of Mohsina Kidwai; Pondicherry Lt Governor Rajendra Kumari Bajpai’s son and daughter-in-law; and three members of Ratnakar Pandey’s family figure in the incomplete list. (Names of 982 PCC members out of a total of 1,242 have so far been released.)

The ultimate winner, however, was UPCC president Jitendra Prasada. By cleverly allocating a handful of berths to senior leaders — who, satisfied, worked overtime to ensure smooth elections of their own kin — he ensured the field was open for him to flood the UPCC with his own men.

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Through this, Prasada has also got a direct stronghold in the AICC. Most heavyweights, too busy fighting their relatives’ battle to find time for their supporters, have ended up with only five-six backers in the new UPCC — a member needs the vote of at least eight for a seat in the AICC. Hence, most of the 156 AICC members to be elected on June 9 are expected to be Prasada loyalists.

Bahuguna’s wife Kamala, besides being busy with her own election, kept canvassing for her sons, Shekhar and Vijay, and daughter-in-law Vinita. Even Congress Legislature Party leader Pramod Tiwari was busy getting his daughter Aradhana elected to the UPCC from Pratapgarh.

Similarly, the late Kamlapati Tripathi’s son Lokpati, a leader in his own right, worked only for his own election and that of his relatives. Besides his son Rajesh Pati, he had to canvass for his brother Manglapati, his brother-in-law and his son.

Former prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri’s three sons, Hari Krishna, Anil and Sunil, and his grandson Diwakar were also too occupied with their own elections to find time for their supporters.

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Many of these heavyweights may find themselves out of the AICC now. Among those who may pay the price for the oversight are: Tiwari, Jagdambika Pal, former chief minister Ram Naresh Yadav, Chandrajit Yadav, Gopinath Dixit and Devendra Dwivedi.

Those likely to sail through on the basis of sheer political stature and personality are Narain Dutt Tewari, Captain Satish Sharma, Balram Singh Yadav, Harish Rawat, Naresh Agrawal and Surendra Awasthi.

There is one thing to spoil Prasada’s joy, though. The UPCC elections have been tainted by allegations of manipulation in the membership drive held earlier this year.

The facts speak for themselves. While there are more than six lakh Congress members registered in Varanasi, the party managed to bag only 75,000 votes in the last parliamentary elections.