Gurugram: When former MP Ashok Tanwar, 48, bid goodbye to the Congress ahead of Haryana assembly polls in 2019, his wife Avantika Maken Tanwar was extremely upset and heartbroken. She had told the media earlier that she felt something within her had died.
Avantika was six years old when her parents—Lalit Maken, a Congress MP, and Gitanjali Maken, Shankar Dayal Sharma’s daughter—were gunned down by Sikh extremists outside their Kirti Nagar residence on 31 July 1985.
Rajiv Gandhi, the then Prime Minister, and Sonia Gandhi were the first to reach the Makens’ residence to console Avantika. Since then, she enjoyed a special bond with Sonia, until Ashok left the Congress on a bitter note.
In the next five years, Ashok switched political loyalty five times, typical of the aayaa raam, gayaa raam culture that has defined Haryana politics since the 1960s.
“The Congress is going through an internal crisis, not because of its political opponents but because of serious internal contradictions,” Ashok wrote to the then Congress president Sonia, in his resignation letter dated 4 October 2019. He also said that the Congress was the “antithesis of democracy, plagued by feudal attitudes and mediaeval conspiracies”.
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What happened before Ashok quit Congress
A month before Tanwar sent in his resignation, the Congress had replaced him as its Haryana unit president—a post he had held since 2014—with Selja Kumari, and also denied assembly election tickets to his loyalists. And two days before it, he, along with his supporters, was demonstrating outside 10, Janpath in New Delhi, calling himself a “human bomb”, slamming former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, and thundering, “Tanwar cannot be finished so easily”.
That was the breaking point with the Congress for Tanwar, who was once a loyal soldier of Rahul Gandhi.
Tanwar carried out Rahul’s “democratisation” experiment in the Indian Youth Congress (IYC), which he headed when the latter became All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary, and in-charge of the IYC and the National Students’ Union of India (NSUI), the Congress’s student wing, in 2007.
An NSUI activist in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Tanwar went on to become the Congress student wing’s president from 2003 to 2005, before heading the IYC for five years till 2010.
Political journey after quitting Congress
After quitting the Congress, Tanwar supported Dushyant Chautala’s Jannayak Janata Party (JJP) in the 2019 Haryana assembly elections, before launching his own socio-political outfit in February 2021, Apna Bharat Morcha, which he projected as the “third national alternative”.
Barely nine months later, he was welcomed into the Trinamool Congress by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee at a function in New Delhi, to create a “third alternative” in Haryana.
In April 2022, he joined the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), hailing the “Kejriwal model of governance”, and vowing to give Haryana a “corruption-free” government. The AAP appointed him the chairman of the campaign committee in the state. But that couldn’t hold back Tanwar, who resigned from the party in January this year to join the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Return to Congress
Now that Tanwar is back in the Congress, party leaders are curious about how it will impact the internal dynamics in the party, given his acrimonious relations with Hooda and also Selja.
Ajay Maken—Avantika’s first cousin, Rajya Sabha MP and AICC treasurer—played a major role in Tanwar’s return to the Congress Thursday.
The Print has learnt that for more than a week, Ajay Maken has been in touch with Tanwar, who contested this year’s Lok Sabha elections from Sirsa, but lost to the Congress’s Selja.
It was Ajay who invited Tanwar to Rahul’s rally in Mahendragarh on the last day of campaigning Thursday.
A source close to Tanwar, who did not want to be named, told The Print that Ajay called his cousin Avantika—almost a week ago—to find out if her husban was interested in rejoining the Congress.
The source also said that Tanwar—who had quit the Congress ahead of the 2019 assembly elections in Haryana due to his differences with Hooda over the distribution of party tickets—took more than two days to make a decision.
“Even when he was weighing the pros and cons of the option to rejoin the Congress, he was apprehensive that even if the top leadership accepted him in the party, the state leadership of the Congress (Hooda and Selja) might not be comfortable with his entry to the Congress,” the source said.
“Tanwar just wanted the party to take concurrence of the state leadership so that there were no issues after his entry. He had it very clear in his mind that he did not have any ambitions or expectations, but all he wanted was that the kind of internal strife within the party, when he was in it from 2014 to 2019, should not happen,” the source added.
The source further said that Tanwar was campaigning in Jind district’s Safidon for the BJP candidate Ram Kumar Gautam Thursday, when he received a message asking him to reach Bawania village of Mahendragarh, where Rahul was addressing a rally.
The source told ThePrint that the state-level leadership of the Congress was apprised of the development.
Once at the rally venue, Rahul welcomed Tanwar to the party and asked Hooda to bestow the Congress scarf to admit him to the party.
“When he contested the Lok Sabha polls in 2009, he was considered one of Rahul’s closest boys. When he left in 2019, Rahul was no longer looking after the affairs of the party. Now, it will have to be seen how much importance he is given by the party. One must not forget that his brother-in-law Ajay is among the top leaders of the party in the AICC today,” a senior Congress leader, who did not want to be named, told ThePrint.
Is state leadership happy with Ashok’s return?
Mahabir Jaglan, a political analyst, told ThePrint that if one looks at the body language of Hooda on the dais when Tanwar was admitted to the party, or the lack of any comments from Selja, it becomes very clear that neither of these two leaders are very happy with Ashok’s return.
“For both Hooda and Selja, it has been a comfortable position within the state Congress. If Hooda is the LoP and the most prominent face of the party, Selja is the Dalit face within the party. If one looks at Ashok’s past, he has the potential to challenge the cosy position of both these leaders. Also, Ashok has grown up in the Congress culture and knows well how to cement one’s position within the party,” Jaglan said.
Tanwar’s early life and education
Born into a Dalit family in Chimni village of Jhajjar district in Haryana, Tanwar is the youngest of the three sons of Dilbag Singh, an army havildar, and Krishna Rathi, a homemaker.
His father shifted to Delhi for the education of his sons. While Dilbag’s elder two sons are graduates and in private jobs, Ashok Tanwar joined the JNU Centre for Historical Studies for his Master’s degree.
He soon became active in campus politics. Students’ politics also introduced him to Avantika—granddaughter of former President Shankar Dayal Sharma—whom he later married in 2005.
“As a child, I was just like a household member of the Gandhi family. I attended Priyanka (Gandhi) ji’s wedding. Initially, I used to address Sonia ji as Sonia aunty. But once I grew up and joined the NSUI, I started addressing her as madam for two reasons,” Avantika told The Print Friday.
She continued: “Firstly, it was a mark of respect because everyone addressed Sonia ji like that. Secondly, once you start your professional journey, addressing Sonia ji—who was the boss of the party at that time—as Sonia aunty would mean one was trying to unduly influence others, including colleagues.”
Avantika, however, said she knew that her husband had not left the party out of choice but because of circumstances.
“In the BJP, former chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar and current chief minister Nayab Saini were very nice to us and respected Ashok ji a lot. Him quitting the BJP has nothing to do with issues with that party. However, returning to the Congress is a homecoming for our family,” Avantika said.
However, addressing a press conference at the Congress headquarters in Delhi Friday, Tanwar said, “I had joined the BJP for a while, but there is no respect for the country’s Constitution and Babasaheb (Ambedkar) there. The BJP works to divide people, whereas Rahul Gandhi has undertaken a journey to unite them. Today, I am once again standing with Rahul Gandhi in the fight to unite the country and save the Constitution.”
(Edited by Radifah Kabir)
Also Read: In jolt to BJP in Haryana, ex-MP Ashok Tanwar rejoins Congress, to boost party’s Dalit outreach