Look Who’s with the BJP

Congressman ND Tiwari, of the sexual adventures, has been getting cosy with the BJP for a while now

Just when all thought scandal-plagued ND Tiwari was on the mat, the veteran Congress leader, sidelined after allegations of his sexual misconduct put the party in an embarrassing situation about a year back, has got up with a new set of surprises. This time he has kicked up a political storm in Uttarakhand—the state he ruled as Chief Minister for five years from 2002 to 2007 and where he still holds considerable influence—by his consistent efforts to develop bridges with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

On 11 February, Tiwari was seen on the dais with BJP leaders Nitin Gadkari, state Chief Minister Rakesh Pokhriyal Nishank and former CM BC Khanduri at a function at Dehradun organised to launch the Atal Khadyanna Yojna, which promises foodgrains at highly subsidised rates to BPL and APL ration card holders in the state. What baffled political observers even more was the fact that the veteran Congress leader was not only all praise for the scheme, but he also repeated several times that his blessings and good wishes were with Nishank. When Gadkari declared that “a similar scheme had worked wonders in Chhattisgarh”, Tiwari was seen nodding his head in appreciation.

Soon after the function, the buzz spread throughout the state, and many said that Tiwari had become senile. But on 2 January this year, he paid a surprise visit to the Uttarakhand BJP headquarters to extend his New Year greetings to the political opponents of the Congress. As there were no one there except the office-in-charge, Urvadutt Bhatt, Tiwari stayed at the BJP office for a few minutes and asked the only saffron man available there to convey his greetings to other party leaders and workers.

He sprang a similar surprise on 9 November last year when he walked up to share the dais with Nishank and other senior BJP leaders at a function at Dehradun marking the formation day of Uttarakhand. He sat there till the completion of the function. The gesture surprised everyone, because with elections due in the state next year, Congress leaders have been usually avoiding any such event by the BJP government.

The 86-year-old Congress leader, whose political trajectory has been so colourful that it makes everyone in the party smile the moment you take his name, has been living in Dehradun ever since he quit as Andhra Pradesh governor in December 2009 over an alleged sex scandal shown through a sting operation on a local TV channel. Though Tiwari claimed that the tape was fabricated, as did his party, the Congress High Command, sensing that this could aggravate the tense atmosphere in Andhra Pradesh, took no time in advising him to quit. Tiwari, an astute politician, cited “ill health” as the reason for giving up his post.

In fact, such a charge was not new for Tiwari. Allegations of sexual misconduct have been made against him even in the past.  There is a case pending in the High Court, for example, with a 30-year-old claiming that the veteran politician is his biological father. While it is for the courts to decide the merits of this claim, Tiwari’s recent hobnobbing with the BJP has once again shown that he must not, and cannot, be written off so easily.

Moreover, this hobnobbing seems to be a sharp move. There are definite indications that Tiwari has been trying to exploit the intense intra-party conflict between Nishank and Khanduri. In this internecine fight within the state unit of the BJP, Tiwari has thrown his weight behind Nishank—a fact that has been used by the Chief Minister to the hilt, and highlighted in every public function attended by the central party leadership.

Whether Nishank actually gains from Tiwari’s support remains a matter of speculation, but what nobody doubts is that Tiwari never does anything without keeping his own interests in mind. For, it is this priority of Tiwari that saw him becoming Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh thrice during the 1970s and 1980s, and later of Uttarakhand. In the early 1990s, he was a contender to be the Prime Minister of India but was beaten by Narasimha Rao. In 1994 he resigned from the Congress, and the following year formed his own All India Indira Congress (Tiwari) along with another sidelined Congress leader Arjun Singh. He, however, returned once Sonia Gandhi took over at the helm of affairs of the party two years later, and after the Congress experienced a devastating defeat under Narasimha Rao during the Lok Sabha election of 1996.

Tiwari is once again out with his manipulative skills. No one is certain how much it would benefit the BJP or harm the Congress in the upcoming Assembly polls. But at the moment, he is the talking point in Dehradun.

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