Sonia comes to Jaiswal’s rescue in UP

Since Jaiswal was Sonia’s choice for the PCC chief’s job in the key state that goes to Assembly polls next year, she is under a fair amount of pressure to ensure that he is able to rejuvenate the party. All the more so since his predecessor, Salman Khurshid, too had been handpicked by Sonia.

The party high command has noted that despite his non-controversial image, Jaiswal is having a difficult time dealing with factional fighting and a demoralised party cadre — the same problems his predecessor had been grappling with.

Moreover, say sources, Jaiswal also has to contend with a long list of party stalwarts who were bypassed when he was selected as the PCC chief and who now have their guns trained on him. These include Congress veterans such as former PCC chief Mahabir Prasad, senior state leaders Jagdambika Pal and Lokpati Tripathi and former MP Harikesh Bahadur. All, say sources, have been reluctant to offer support to Jaiswal who, being a first-time MP, is considered relatively junior.

Being a relative lightweight in the party hierarchy is also apparently one of the reasons why Jaiswal has been so far unable to break any ice with the state unit’s rival factions, including the one that owes allegiance to senior CWC member Jitendra Prasada. Prasada is angry since he wasn’t consulted by Sonia over Jaiswal’s appointment and also because the latter is viewed with suspicion due to his Congress(T) background.

Meanwhile, the state unit received a setback today when senior leader Ramesh Dixit quit the party to join the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). Dixit, who was the UPCC’s chief spokesperson for over a decade and belonged to Prasada’s camp, has been made the president of the NCP’s UP unit.

Speaking to reporters soon after formally joining the NCP, Dixit blamed the Congress (T) for his decision to quit, saying that the domination of its leaders in the state as well as in the high command had made the Congress a “party of coteries and sycophants”. He also questioned the party’s secular credentials by asserting that it had not been able to find a single Muslim leader to head its Minorities’ Cell. Both Jaiswal and senior leader Arjun Singh, who head the Minorities’ cell, belonged to the Congress (T).