Who gains if Rita Bahuguna Joshi leaves Congress for BJP?
No sooner had the "khoon ki dalali" controversy settled for Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, than his party found itself staring at the high-profile desertion of former Uttar Pradesh Congress chief Rita Bahuguna Joshi.
News about her departure from Congress to BJP has been doing the rounds for the last 48 hours. According to sources close to the leader, Joshi was feeling marginalised within the party that has projected Sheila Dikhit as its CM candidate.
Rita Bahuguna Joshi had led the Congress party in the 2012 Assembly elections with the party faring poorly.
While UP BJP leaders have neither confirmed nor denied this development, it is said that Rita Bahuguna Joshi has already met senior party leaders.
So, even though no final decision has been made on the date of her joining, it is expected to take place anytime soon.
The news was met with swift denial by both the Congress as well as Joshi's brother and former Uttarakhand CM Vijay Bahuguna, who had quit the grand old party to join the BJP.
If the former UP Congress chief joins the BJP, the saffron party will be buoyed by a second Brahmin face in the state.
Before Joshi, it was Brajesh Pathak of the BSP who quit the Dalit front to join the BJP. Sources in UP also indicate that Rita Bahuguna Joshi is acutely aware of the fact that given the circumstances, it is less likely that she will win a seat on a Congress ticket.
She was elected from the Lucknow Cantonment seat in 2012, but this time she faced an uphill task. Pitted against SP supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav's younger daughter-in-law Aparna Yadav, Joshi is aware of the task at hand - and how crucial the 2017 victory is for her to stay politically relevant.
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| It will be embarrassing for the Gandhi family considering she was once close to them. (Photo: PTI) |
According to a UP BJP leader, if Rita Bahuguna joins the saffron party, it will be a win-win situation for both sides. She will be able to retain her seat and the party will be in a position to send a message to its upper caste voters, especially the Brahmins.
This would be a double whammy for the Congress as Joshi's brother and former Uttarakhand CM Vijay Bahuguna had defected from the Congress to join the BJP only recently.
However, there are many Congress leaders in UP who politely point to the track record of Rita Bahuguna Joshi, especially the dismal performance of the Congress party under her leadership in 2012 Assembly elections as the chief reason for status quo.
A UP Congress leader sympathetic to Rita Bahuguna Joshi said that if she leaves, the party will also have to share the blame as this time she has been left clueless about her role - and marginalised to a great extent. "Though there are many today who will say that she was chief of UP Congress when it ended up a poor fourth, they are biased. I hope you remember the kind of continuous roughshods over her shoulder by Digvijaya Singh and other central leaders, who were continuously running a parallel script. She was only an ornamental UP Congress chief," he said, stating that now she also knows it's a fight for her survival.
It will be uniquely embarrassing for the Gandhi family considering she was once close to them.