‘BJP and I have strong differences of opinion’: 2 months after he said this, AK Antony’s son Anil joins party

Anil K Antony stepped down from posts in the Congress in January after his criticism of a BBC documentary on Gujarat riots sparked a row in the party.

Anil was one of the national coordinators of the Congress’s social media and digital communications department but failed to make much headway in the party. (Twitter/@surendranbjp)

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More than two months after he resigned from his positions in the Congress following a controversy over his comments on a BBC documentary on Gujarat riots, former Kerala Chief Minister A K Antony’s son Anil K Antony found himself in the BJP on Thursday.

In January, Anil had prefaced his comments on the documentary by saying that “despite his large differences with the BJP” he believed that the documentary could undermine India’s sovereignty. In a subsequent interview to The Indian Express, when asked about his views on the documentary, Anil said, “The first sentence itself says very clearly that, and the BJP and I are entities that actually have a lot of strong differences of opinion on a lot of things. But when it comes to the country’s core interests, including national interests and sovereignty, I think we should keep partisan politics out of it because I personally feel that is playing with fire and which will have bad long-term ramifications. So I said the country’s sovereignty comes over everything else.”

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At the time, Anil said he had not spoken to his father, a former Defence Minister and a Gandhi family loyalist, before stepping down from the party posts. “It was my personal decision based on my own convictions and conscience,” he said.

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On Thursday, as he joined the BJP, Anil took aim at the Congress leadership for working for a “single family” instead of working for the country. Asked if he had consulted his father before joining the BJP, Anil said, “This is not about personalities, this is about differences of opinion and ideas. I strongly believe that I have taken the right step. My respect for my father will remain the same.”

Anil was one of the national coordinators of the Congress’s social media and digital communications department but failed to make much headway in the party. He was believed to be close to Congress MP Sashi Tharoor. He had thanked the parliamentarian from Thiruvananthapuram when he quit his posts in January and was one of the signatories to Tharoor’s nomination papers when he contested the Congress presidential polls last year.

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Anil has a B.Tech in Industrial Engineering from the College of Engineering in Thiruvananthapuram and obtained a Master’s degree in science from Stanford University. He became active in the Congress in 2017 ahead of the Assembly elections in Gujarat. On the eve of the general elections in 2019, he became the digital media coordinator of Congress in Kerala. The state party president at the time, Mullappally Ramachandran, and Tharoor brought him to Kerala. At the time, this raised eyebrows in the party as several people construed it as senior Antony’s bid to launch his eldest son in the party. Many Youth Congress leaders openly opposed the party’s decision at the time.

During the 2021 Kerala Assembly elections, Antony was in charge of the social media wing of the Congress’s campaign. After the elections, he stayed away from active politics as he failed to consolidate his position in the party and create an identity independent of his father.

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Last year, Anil was selected for the European Union Visitors Program (EUVP), a young leaders’ programme. In November, he joined the advisory council of the Ernest and Julio Gallo School of Management in the United States.

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