New Delhi: Holding a bouquet of flowers, standing beside Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, former Haryana Congress chief Ashok Tanwar Monday announced his move to the AAP, just months after he was inducted into Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress.
Tanwar, a Dalit leader from Haryana — and the youngest and longest-serving leader of the Youth Congress — has said his commitment to serving the people was sacrosanct.
“Today this aam aadmi ka sipahi is now in the Aam Aadmi (Party)”, he said, while speaking to ThePrint Tuesday. He spent barely five months in the Trinamool Congress, a party he joined in November 2021.
For Tanwar, 46, joining the AAP brings a hope of reviving his political fortunes. He has been in political wilderness since quitting the Congress in October 2019. Meanwhile, in Tanwar, the AAP has a young Dalit face in Haryana, where the Schedule Castes constitute about one-fifth of the population.
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From ‘Rahul confidant to Hooda enemy’
Resigning from the Congress just ahead of the 2019 state polls, Tanwar first extended his support to Dushyant Chautala’s Jannayak Janta Party (JJP). He then went on to start his own outfit — Apna Bharat Morcha — which he said still continues to function.
“It is a non-political platform, focussed on building new political leadership from non-political backgrounds,” he added.
He was then approached by Prashant Kishor and the TMC. Tanwar subsequently joined the party, convinced that Mamata, “a strong leader, would go pan-India”.
“I still think Mamata ji is a very daring lady and have great respect for her and our paths (of leaving the Congress) are also similar. But I waited for over five months and each day or minute is important in the fight against the BJP. I saw no intervention up north, so quit the party,” Tanwar added.
Explaining that the AAP had been courting him for the past two years, Tanwar said he respects the work of the party and their intention and model of development.
Welcoming Tanwar into the party, AAP national convenor Arvind Kejriwal noted that his (Kejriwal’s) roots are in Haryana and he was delighted to see his party’s unit in the state “getting strengthened this way”. He said the AAP would drive change in Haryana, too, with Tanwar’s “vision”.
For five-and-a-half years, between February 2014 and August 2019, Tanwar served as president of the Haryana Pradesh Congress Committee. His appointment was said to be an effort by Rahul Gandhi to woo the Dalit community.
Rahul’s confidant (Tanwar) being given charge of the party in Haryana was also seen as a signal to veteran Congress leader and former CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda.
Tanwar ended up having a running feud with Hooda — a mass leader — throughout his tenure as Haryana Congress chief.
Another factor that didn’t work in his favour was the Congress’ electoral debacles under his leadership.
Electoral loss and leaving Congress
In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, the Congress, under Tanwar’s leadership, won none of the 10 seats in the state, as against the nine it won in the in 2009 general election. It won only 1 seat in 2014, when the Lok Sabha elections began two months after Tanwar’s appointment as state party chief.
It was the same in the assembly elections.
Months after his February 2014 appointment as Haryana Congress chief, the party won only 15 of 90 seats seats in the assembly elections held in October. Its vote share dropped to 20.58 per cent from 35 per cent in 2009.
Four months after the 2019 Lok Sabha election — and six weeks before the assembly election — Tanwar was replaced by another Dalit leader, Kumari Selja, as state Congress president.
An upset Tanwar held protests outside Sonia Gandhi’s 10 Janpath residence in Delhi, before quitting the party in October 2019.
“I realised that more than half (of Congress leaders) were with the BJP and the other half dabbled in either black money or blackmail,” he said.
The ticket distribution ahead of the 2019 assembly elections was the final straw for Tanwar, he added.
“I wasn’t asking for tickets for myself, but for those who served the party day and night. Me and other party workers do all the work and campaign in 50 degrees Celsius, then why should ‘chor (thieves)’ get our tickets,” he said. “There was no Hooda, no Surjewala (senior leader Randeep Singh Surjewala), no Kumari Selja, only Tanwar (in campaigning for the party),” he said
“Julm-jaati sehne ki bhi limit hoti hai (there is a limit to tolerating injustice),” he said.
According to Tanwar, what upset him was that while he had been a close aide of Rahul Gandhi, the former Congress president and the rest of the leadership were “mere spectators”, and did not do anything to help him or address his grievances.
“He (Rahul Gandhi) knew everything, which is why I was more upset and left. If he did not know I would not have left,” Tanwar said.
The Congress’ vote share in the 2019 assembly election rose marginally to 28 per cent, an achievement credited to Hooda. Tanwar had already left the party.
Student leader to MP
Born in Haryana’s Jhajjar district in 1976, Tanwar said he comes from a family of farmers and Armymen, and politics was “never an option” initially.
He entered the political arena in Jawaharlal Nehru University — from where he did an MA, MPhil and PhD in history — and joined the Congress’ student wing, the National Students’ Union of India (NSUI).
He went on to become the youngest person to head the Indian Youth Congress in 2005.
He was once a member of Rahul Gandhi’s inner coterie — it was reported in 2008 that if any Congress member had to track Rahul’s travels, they had to be routed through Tanwar.
In 2009, he became a Member of Parliament from Sirsa, a seat he lost in the next general election in 2014.
“I joined politics wanting to serve my country with a sense of idealism. You think something else while joining politics and once you enter you realise there is something different altogether at play.”
After being out of the political spotlight for over two years, Tanwar made news when he announced his entry into the TMC last year.
At the time, he said that politics was at a crossroads and he found a “natural affinity” with Mamata Banerjee, as they had both “travelled the same path of struggle, and always stood for feeble voices — weak, poor, peasants, roadside vendors, unemployed youth, neglected women, elderly”.
Calling Tanwar “arrogant”, Haryana Congress leader and MLA Kuldeep Vats said Tanwar was more focussed on breaking the party, than holding it together.
“He was earlier in conspiracy with the BJP, focussed on destroying the Congress, now he is focussed on breaking the AAP also,” Vats told ThePrint Tuesday.
(Edited by Poulomi Banerjee)
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