A political revolt in the Congress from within

The Congress’ government in Himachal Pradesh is now on unstable grounds and may well collapse.

The timing was critical since the Budget Session of the Assembly was on and the government could have fallen on a simple cut motion. That eventuality was avoided by the Speaker suspending 15 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) legislators for disorderly behaviour in the House and allowing the Finance Bill to pass with a voice vote. The Assembly was then suspended sine die.

The crisis was precipitated by the cross-voting of six Congress and three independent legislators in favour of the BJP candidate in the Rajya Sabha poll on February 27. If there are other disgruntled MLAs in the ranks of the Congress, then the government may find it difficult to survive. In the 68-member house, the Congress had 40 legislators, the BJP 25, and the independents three.

Despite claims being made the Congress predicament was not created by the BJP. The defeat of Congress candidate Abhishek Manu Singhvi in the lone Rajya Sabha seat was engineered from within the Congress.

There was no ‘horse-trading’. No government agency put pressure on the MLAs to act against party interests. There was mutiny within the party. In many ways the BJP became a collateral beneficiary of the Congress’ mismanagement of internal discontent.

Its beginnings may be traced to the dashed hopes of Anand Sharma, a local claimant for the Rajya Sabha seat. Sharma, a Congress leader from Himachal Pradesh who was a vocal participant in the disgruntled G-23 group. He signed an open letter arguing for stronger leadership and organisational overhaul of the party in August 2022. He was perhaps not forgiven for criticising the party’s central leadership.

Various members of the disgruntled 23, however, have been accommodated by the Congress high command. One of them, Mukul Wasnik, is now entrusted with negotiating alliances and selecting Lok Sabha candidates for the general elections while another, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, has been sent to Himachal Pradesh to defuse the current crisis. On the other hand, Sharma, a life-time Congressman, was ostracised, despite Chief Minister  Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu having apparently proposed his candidature from the state.

Himachal Pradesh is a small state like Uttarakhand. It has few Lok Sabha seats and even fewer Rajya Sabha seats. Local leaders are bound to be upset when their claims for these seats are ignored. Normally, the bigger national parties, the Congress and the BJP alike, tend to field outsiders from the larger states — which have a bigger quota of Rajya Sabha seats. In these states, even if there is resentment against outsiders being fielded for the Rajya Sabha, it can be managed as the cake is bigger and there are other positions of power that can be distributed.

Singhvi is the best lawyer that the Congress has in its ranks. It is natural for the party to want to reward him. However, he has little relationship with Himachal Pradesh or its people. There was bound to be resentment against him as an outsider being imposed on the state across the political spectrum. Indications are that any outside aspirant from the Congress would have led to similar resentment.

The party would seem to have been aware of unhappiness within the ranks of legislators in Himachal Pradesh. It would explain why Sonia Gandhi’s Rajya Sabha candidature was shifted from Himachal Pradesh to Rajasthan, a state from where she sailed into the Upper House unopposed. The party seems to have accepted Sukhu’s assurances that he had everything under control.

Sukhu’s claims are belied not only by the cross-voting but also by the six rebel MLAs of the party being whisked away by Haryana Police to Panchkula from under his nose, after the voting. It is no surprise that upset Congressmen are asking, “What kind of administration was he running?”

The BJP too became aware of the unhappiness within the Congress, and stepped into the breach. The candidate it put up, Harsh Mahajan, was an old Congress hand. He had been the political secretary of the former Chief Minister (late) Virbhadra Singh, a former minister and three-time legislator. He had joined the BJP when he was denied a ticket for the Assembly polls by the Congress. The six rebels of the Congress voted for a local leader who had been their former colleague rather than an outsider imposed on the legislative party by the high command.

The political drama spun further out of control. Former Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh’s faction within the local Congress saw this as an opportunity to demand a change in leadership of the state government. Virbhadra Singh’s son Vikramaditya Singh resigned as minister from the Sukhu government. Although the putative revolt has been resolved within 12 hours, the threat from the BJP to topple the Sukhu government is strong.

The BJP has kept the six rebel MLAs sequestered in Panchkula. It flew them in for a day to present themselves before the Speaker for a hearing on the anti-defection law and took them back. The party MLAs have met the Governor demanding that Sukhu seek a vote of confidence. That the rebels are being kept in a resort in Haryana suggests that a bigger game of toppling the Congress government may be afoot. The BJP is claiming that it would form the next government in Himachal Pradesh.

Meanwhile, the six rebel Congress MLAs have been disqualified by the Speaker under the anti-defection law. This would reduce the size of the assembly to 62 from 68, requiring only 32 seats for a majority.

The Congress, which now has 34 MLAs, is in desperate damage control mode to ensure that other party MLAs do not switch sides. There is even talk of changing the Chief Minister if that would satisfy the legislators. If claims of 20 additional MLAs being upset with Sukhu are true, then his days may be numbered in an attempt to save the Congress government in the state.

(Bharat Bhushan is a Delhi-based journalist)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.