Dehradun: The exit of Uttarakhand transport minister Yashpal Arya and his son, first-time MLA Sanjiv Arya from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has jolted the Pushkar Singh Dhami government — and given an advantage to the Congress.
On Monday, the Arya father and son quit the ruling BJP as they rejoined their old party. The move came months ahead of the assembly elections.
Arya is a strong Dalit face and a former Uttarakhand Pradesh Congress Committee (UPCC) chief. A six-time MLA, Arya has never lost any election since Uttarakhand was formed in November 2000. He is considered a popular face in the Udham Singh Nagar and Nainital districts in the Tarai-Bhabar belt of the Kumaon region.
His value can be gauged from the fact that CM Dhami himself tried hard to dissuade his cabinet minister from leaving the party for close to two weeks.
The CM had breakfast at Arya’s residence on 25 September and an hour-long chat with the minister, who was said to be angry with the BJP state leadership on power sharing issues.
Dhami swung into action a day after Congress stalwart and ex-CM Harish Rawat publicly said that he wanted to see a Dalit CM in the state. Earlier, Rawat had also said that BJP will have to pay heavy price for its poaching advances.
Arya’s exit is being seen as a big loss to the BJP at a time when the party has announced its aim to win 60 seats in the 70-member Uttarakhand assembly.
According to sources, Arya held three or four rounds of talks in New Delhi over the past three days with Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and Rahul Gandhi before rejoining the Congress. He had left the party in 2017 over a tussle with then-CM Rawat.
This was the latest round of MLA-poaching by the two major political parties that started last month. The BJP has already poached one sitting Congress MLA from the Garhwal region, apart from inducting two independents in the party fold.
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Undefeated Uttarakhand legislator
Arya had been a strong Dalit Congress face in Udham Singh Nagar and Nainital for nearly 30 years before parting ways with the party just before the last assembly elections.
He was first elected as MLA in the 10th Uttar Pradesh state assembly in 1989, followed by a second victory in the 12th state assembly.
He has been an undefeated Uttarakhand legislator in all four assembly elections held so far. He won his first two elections in 2002 and 2007 from Mukteshwar, while in 2012 and 2017, he won from Bazpur, a constituency reserved for Scheduled Castes.
Arya was a close associate and loyalist of former chief minister N.D. Tiwari in a chronically faction-ridden Uttarakhand Congress. He was the first speaker of the Uttarakhand assembly in 2002 when Tiwari headed the state’s first elected government.
Being a Dalit leader in the Kumaon division and a Tiwari loyalist, Arya was made the state Congress chief as Harish Rawat’s successor in 2007. He led the Congress state unit until 2014 for two consecutive terms. It was under his leadership that the Congress won the third assembly elections in the state in 2012.
Arya was also a cabinet minister, first in the government led by Vijay Bahuguna, and then in the Rawat government.
Arya’s son, Sanjiv Arya is a first-time MLA, who was elected in 2017 from Nainital.
According to Congress sources, Arya parted ways with the party in 2017 after his successor PCC chief Kishore Upadhyay and then-CM Harish Rawat denied a ticket to Sanjiv.
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Arya’s re-entry in Congress
Congress sources told ThePrint that serious discussions with Yashpal Arya were going on for over a month, amid talks of his disenchantment with the BJP leadership, but the deal was struck after Priyanka Gandhi agreed to meet him last week.
After a meeting with Priyanka, Arya, his son, and a third BJP MLA from Dehradun had 3-4 rounds of meetings with Rahul Gandhi to secure the deal.
However, the BJP managed to get hold of the third MLA, who was at the 10 Janpath bungalow in Lutyens’ Delhi. Congress leaders say that while the third MLA’s entry into the Congress has been prevented by the BJP for now, he will join by Diwali.
The latest defection was managed by the camp of leader of the opposition Pritam Singh and AICC state in-charge Devendra Yadav. Singh was with the Aryas and the third BJP MLA in Delhi for the past three days.
The Sikh farmer factor
Arya’s decision to leave the BJP has also come due to the need to be seen in support of the farmers amid Sikh voters’ anger in the region.
The BJP is likely to bear the brunt of Sikh farmers’ anger in the Udham Singh Nagar area, where the community has a decisive say in around seven assembly segments.
Anti-BJP sentiments among farmers, mainly Sikhs, has been aggravated after the Lakhimpur Kheri incident in Uttar Pradesh, in which eight people were killed including four farmers.
(Edited by Amit Upadhyaya)
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