'JNU gang has hijacked Congress in UP'

'Every Congress leader in UP and the rest of India is calling me and thanking me that finally someone spoke about this JNU gang ruling the Congress party in UP.'

A day after its poor showing in the Uttar Pradesh state assembly election, heads started to roll in the Congress party.

One of the first to be suspended was its electronic media and Urdu press coordinator Zeeshan Haider for allegedly making 'derogatory' remarks against the leadership.

After the party's dismal showing in the polls, Haider, in an interaction with the media last week, blamed people close to Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi for the party's poor performance. Of the 403 assembly seats in UP, the Congress won just two, its worst showing ever.

In an interview with Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com, Zeeshan denies that he said anything against Priyanka Gandhi, but agrees he spoke against her coterie, who, he alleges, have Communist leanings and have tagged onto the Congress only to further their interests.

What did you say against the Congress leadership that led to your suspension?

The UPCC (Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee) cannot suspend me because I am an AICC (All India Congress Committee) member from Lucknow city. Only Sonia Gandhi, the AICC president, has the right to suspend me. So, this suspension is wrong and does not apply to me.

This JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University) gang has hijacked the Congress in Uttar Pradesh and are servants of Priyanka Gandhi. They have no idea of the Congress culture and protocol. Therefore, I don't believe I am suspended because this JNU gang in the Congress in UP has no power to do that.

What do you mean by JNU culture in the Congress?

Today in Uttar Pradesh the people who are leading the Congress party were earlier associated with the Left parties. They are making the condition of the Congress party the same as they did to the Communist parties in India.

How can ex-JNU leaders hijack the Congress all of a sudden? Who are these people? They must have names.

I don't want to name them and give them importance. They are servants (of Priyanka Gandhi) and I don't want to reveal who they are as everybody knows them.

Every Congress leader in UP and the rest of India is calling me and thanking me that finally someone spoke about this JNU gang ruling the Congress party in UP.

He spoke rudely and in an insulting manner to every Congress worker. 30 Congressmen quit the party after this man entered the UP Congress. Be it a former Congress MP or a former MLA, they all left because of this man and they have mentioned the reason also.

This man does not want any local UP Congressman or woman to come close or near to Priyanka Gandhi so that she will come to know the real situation. And because of this you see the result of the Congress.

Why can't you directly approach Priyanka Gandhi?

We cannot do that because this man has placed all JNU gang members close to Priyanka Gandhi. This JNU gang is holding all the five key posts of the UP Congress. These people joined the Congress party just 2-3 years ago.

Today, nobody can meet Priyanka unless they go through this JNU gang. And even if someone somehow gets a chance to meet Priyanka, then this gang will ensure that they sit in on the meeting with Priyanka so nobody can talk against them.

I was the media in charge of the Congress party for three years earlier and imagine, I too cannot meet Priyanka without asking these JNU gang members. I have to go through their route only. This does not pertain to me alone, but every Congressman who wants to meet Priyanka.

But what went wrong for the party? You got only 2 percent votes in the UP assembly election.

Our campaign was wrong. We did campaign only to manage events and make money. These people took money from Congress ticket aspirants and only then distributed tickets. These things are not reaching the ears of Priyanka Gandhi.

I had no option but to come out in the open and tell Priyanka Gandhi about it on social media. I could have done it during election time too, but I didn't do that because I did not want to face the allegation 'jis thaali mein khaya, ussi mein chedd kiya'. Therefore, I spoke about all this only after the elections.

Imran Masood, another Congress leader from UP, quit the party before the election and joined the Samajwadi Party. Didn't you feel that the Congress has no future in UP?

My father is in the Congress for the last 54 years. The Congress is India's future. This is the party which got India's Independence. And this party is being ruled by these JNU gang members who joined the party two years ago. They are ruling us and telling us what to do.

But is the Congress not a sinking ship due to which even leaders like Jitin Prasada quit the party?

He quit because of these people. You call any of the Congressman in UP and they will tell you this JNU gang is responsible for them quitting the Congress party. The day he came to UP he suspended 11 Congress MLAs and MPs. Those who salute him stay in the Congress.

You speak to R P N Singh or even Jitin Prasada, they will blame this man.

Why are you blaming this JNU gang and not admitting that the Congress has lost touch with ground reality?

We had a very good chance to perform well in UP. Priyanka Gandhi started her campaign two years ago in UP unlike Akhilesh (Yadav, the Samajwadi party president) who came to campaign in the last six months. Priyanka went to jail too, but we could not convert all that into votes because of this JNU gang in the party.

Moreover, we got wrong candidates to contest the elections on a Congress ticket. If you see the records, then you will find out that Congress candidates only helped by cutting into other party votes and helping the BJP. This happened in 70 percent of our party candidates's results.

When your only mass base leader Ajay Kumar Lalu came third in his constituency, it reveals that people do not believe in the Congress.

Exactly. Ajay Kumar Lalu's condition within the Congress was bad before the election. He had no power to appoint even a peon in the UP Congress party office. All due to this JNU man who is governing the UP Congress.

Has Priyanka Gandhi nothing to do with the Congress debacle in the UP elections?

She worked very hard. No other politician from any other political party worked as hard as her. It is just that our party took a wrong turn during the election campaign time. All this thanks to the JNU gang.

But no community in UP votes for the Congress today. Muslims don't vote for you. Upper caste Hindus don't vote for you. Dalits don't vote for the Congress. You have no voter base in any community in UP, isn't it?

Yes, because we never became an option for the voters from any community. This JNU gang never gave that kind of direction to the party. They weakened the party from within. They helped the BJP win elections indirectly.

Is it because Priyanka Gandhi is looking at the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and in this election, she just wanted to establish a Congress base in UP?

If this JNU man leads the Congress in UP, we can just forget 2024. The Congress missed a golden opportunity.

The Congress got 9 percent votes in 1996. It has now been reduced to 2 percent.

In the 2012 election, we had 29 MLAs in UP. This was eight more than in the 2007 election. And our vote share rose by 2.5 percent under the leadership of Rita Bahuguna Joshi.

In 2017, we contested only 100 seats in alliance with the SP (which contested 303 seats). This was the time our graph was rising. We should have contested all 403 assembly seats.

The Congress party died in experimental politics. Our workers who were fighting against SP policies on the streets didn't know what to do. They told party leaders how can we go and ask votes in the name of the SP when we were exposing the wrong deeds of that party between 2012 and 2017? Nobody listened to them then, so these workers decided to shift to the SP.

The biggest blow the Congress faced in UP was when they tied up with the SP in 2017. From 29 MLAs we dropped to seven in 2017.

This time, again we experimented (with these JNU leaders) and that is the reason the Congress fared so poorly in UP.

But your party fought this election alone. So, what was the experiment this time?

The experiment that we will give 40 percent tickets to women. We had to export women from outside constituencies and make them contest elections. Congress workers struggling for the party in UP did not get tickets.

Go and find out who are these women who got the tickets. They were not traditional Congress workers.

By experimenting, we finished the Congress in UP. We only won two seats and lost the deposit in 387 seats.

Was it wrong to give women tickets?

No, it was not. 40 percent tickets were given wrong women candidates. There were only 20 correct Congress women candidates, who actually belonged to the Congress. The remaining 110 women got Congress tickets because other parties refused to give them tickets.

These women never worked for the Congress party. If they bring such outsiders as candidates, then surely Congress workers will never support them.

Priyanka Gandhi worked hard, but we did not put up right candidates.

Do you feel the Congress can still stand on its feet in Uttar Pradesh?

Yes, provided this JNU gang is ousted. People still want the Congress party, 100 percent.