NEWSLINKS
US EDITION
COLUMNISTS
DIARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ELECTION 99
ELECTIONS
ARCHIVES

Search Rediff

'Who's to blame other than Khursheed?'

Sharad Pradhan in Lucknow

Trouble is again brewing in the Uttar Pradesh Congress.

Infighting, factionalism and dirty politicking, which had been its bane in the last decade since the party went out of power, is now clouding everything else, and disgusted senior partymen are many.

"Thanks to the indifference of top party leaders who prefer to remain surrounded by sycophants without realising ground realities, the party has been down in the dumps," says senior party leader Ammar Rizvi. This is the fist time he is speaking out in the 35 years he has been with the Congress.

Rizvi, who has been a Cabinet minister in successive Congress governments, resigned last week as the deputy leader of the Congress Legislature Party.

Speaking to rediff.com he said, "I have done my bit to draw the attention of the party high command towards the deteriorating image of the party and its failure to once again don the mantle of a 'people's party', but I still wonder if anyone is listening."

In his resignation letter sent directly to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, he did not mince words in expressing his disillusionment with the state of affairs in the UP Congress. This, he pointed out, was responsible for the "humiliating defeat that the party suffered at the recently concluded Rajya Sabha biennial poll."

Rizvi holds UPCC chief Salman Khursheed and CLP chief Pramod Tiwari responsible for the debacle. "But no one seems to be bothered," he complained.

Asked if he would urge Khursheed and Tiwari to step down, he retorted, "I am not demanding their resignation at all. Let them stay on in their respective positions until there is one active member left in the Congress."

Asserting that his intention was neither to embarrass nor to run down any leader, he sought to clarify, "Let this not be misunderstood that I have any aspirations for either of those offices."

"I feel it is high time the party realised the necessity to let some young dynamic person with sufficient experience in public life lead the Congress in Uttar Pradesh," he added.

Rizvi does not hesitate to charge Khursheed of "total failure to rebuild the party." He went on to cite the example of the party's plummeting voting graph between the last general Lok Sabha election and the recent by-election at certain places in the state.

"Who is to blame other than Khursheed?" he asked.

Expressing concern over the ever-receding strength of the party in the state assembly, which has now come down to an all-time low of 15, he pointed out, "It was not as bad even in the Congress party's worst period in 1977, when we had 41 seats in the 425-member house."

Visibly frustrated over Gandhi's indifference to his resignation, he chose to vent his anger against Khursheed and Tiwari . "It is high time some kind of accountability is evolved within the party machinery so that those who fail to deliver the goods can be pulled out of responsible assignments," he said. "After all it is now a question of the survival of the party."

Making an indirect dig at Gandhi's leadership, he remarked, "Even though the party had been fragmented over the recent years, no effort was made to rebuild the loss."

He went on to ask, "Now shouldn't someone have made an effort to bring back those into the Congress fold who had walked away? Likewise, was it not necessary to give some kind of recognition to those who had preferred to stay on?"

Rizvi, however, doesn't seem to have given up completely. He firmly denied the talk that he would quit the party's primary membership. "I have no intention to leave the party," he asserted.

Asked what his plans were in that case, he quipped, "I will continue to make more attempts to let my voice be heard in the interest of the party by those who matter." He concluded with the Urdu couplet:

"Suniye ke na suniye, ham haale dil sunayenge [Whether anyone listens or not, I'll keep pouring my heart out]."

Back to top

Tell us what you think of this report