Tanwar, 48, locked in an intra-party battle with former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, was also denied a ticket for the assembly election that year.
Two days before the letter to Sonia, he and his supporters had demonstrated outside her residence at 10, Janpath. He had called himself a “human bomb” and slammed Hooda. “Tanwar cannot be finished so easily,” he had thundered.
Fast forward four years later, Tanwar, once seen as a member of Rahul Gandhi’s inner coterie, is reportedly set to join the BJP.
But the journey from the Congress to the BJP has had several detours.
In the 2019 assembly election, Tanwar supported Dushyant Chautala’s Jannayak Janta Party (JJP), now an alliance partner in the BJP-led state government.
In February 2021, he launched his own sociopolitical outfit, Apna Bharat Morcha, which he projected as the “third national alternative”.
Barely nine months later, however, he was welcomed into the Trinamool Congress by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee 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 its campaign committee in the state, but Tanwar resigned from the party Tuesday.
As he departed, it was his disenchantment with the Congress that he cited as his reason.
The AAP’s “alignment” with the Congress under the banner of the Opposition’s INDIA bloc, he said in his letter to AAP convenor Arvind Kejriwal, didn’t sit right with his “ethics”.
While the twists in Tanwar’s political career since 2019 are seen as a mistake by political analysts and leaders within the Congress — one MLA told ThePrint this had cost Tanwar “his credibility” — the BJP appears ready to welcome him into the fold.
Haryana BJP president Nayab Singh Saini described Tanwar as a “good political leader with a mass base who did very well in the Congress”.
The Congress, he said, “didn’t treat him well”.
“The Congress is a party with deep-rooted nepotism. A few political families have control over the party and these families don’t allow leaders like Tanwar who have their own base to grow,” he added. “Dalit leaders in particular are not well in the Congress. I am confident that Tanwar will be an asset for our party,” said Saini.
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A personal bond shatters
Born in a Dalit family in Chimni village of Haryana’s Jhajjar district, Tanwar is the youngest of three sons of Dilbag Singh, an Army havildar, and Krishna Rathi, a homemaker.
Tanwar’s father shifted to Delhi for the education of his sons. While Tanwar’s brothers went on to get private jobs after graduation, he began dabbling in politics when he joined JNU’s Centre for Historical Studies for his Master’s.
He joined the National Students Union of India (NSUI), the Congress’ student wing, and eventually rose to become its president (2003-2005).
He also led the Indian Youth Congress (IYC) for five years (2005-2010), and was tasked with carrying out Rahul’s ‘democratisation’ experiment when the latter became the All India Congress Committee general secretary in charge of the IYC and NSUI.
It was during his NSUI days that Tanwae met his wife Avantika Maken, who was also a member of the organisation.
For Maken, the granddaughter of former President of India Shankar Dayal Sharma, the Congress has meant more than a party.
Avantika was 6 when her parents Lalit Maken, a Congress MP, and Gitanjali Maken, Sharma’s daughter, were gunned down by Sikh extremists outside their Kirti Nagar residence on 31 July 1985.
In the wake of the killings, Rajiv Gandhi, the then Prime Minister, and his wife Sonia Gandhi were the first to reach the Makens’ house to console Avantika, and thus began a special bond.
“As a child, I was just like a household member of the Gandhi family,” Avantika told ThePrint Thursday.
“I attended Priyanka 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’,” she added.
“One, because everyone addressed Sonia ji like this as a mark of respect. Two, because, once you are in the professional life, addressing Sonia ji, who was boss of the party, as Sonia aunty would have meant one is trying to unduly influence others, colleagues.”
While Avantika stands by her husband and understands his rancour with the Congress, it was with some sadness that she saw the relationship deteriorate.
“It felt as if something within me had died,” Avantika had told ThePrint in 2019.
Asked Thursday whether she still felt pangs for the shattering of that childhood bond with the Gandhi family, Avantika said, “For me, my husband Ashok ji comes first.”
“I am the daughter of Gitanjali Maken, who jumped in front of her husband when the assassins were about to shoot him,” she said, recounting their assassination.
“Even when they were being shifted to hospital, I was told, my mother was asking how Lalit is. Kuki (Ranjit Singh Gill alias Kuki is one of the couple’s three murderers) said on record on Rubaru Roshni (the Aamir Khan-Kiran Rao-produced docuseries) that they didn’t want to kill Gitanjali,” she said. “They tried hard to separate her from Lalit Maken. But she just stuck to her husband and they (Kuki and others) didn’t have much time. So, they had to kill both,” Avantika added.
Avantika said Tanwar left the Congress because he was not treated fairly by the party.
“It was not because he was replaced as a state Congress chief. That is a process in every political party. They keep changing officebearers,” she said.
“But you appoint a person as the party’s state chief, expect him to bring people to the party fold. The man worked hard for more than five years. Brought many new people to the party fold. They participate in the party’s padyatras, cycle yatras. Spend money from their pockets and burn fuel in the hope that he (Ashok), as the party chief, will get them party tickets,” she added, noting that, when it was time to distribute tickets, “none of his supporters was given a ticket”.
“Some of them were so influential that they won elections on their own or by seeking tickets from other parties. What face would Ashok ji have to show to his supporters had he remained with the Congress even after that grave injustice?” she asked.
Whichever party her husband joins, Avantika said, he “should give his 100 percent, as he has been doing so far”.
“I indeed felt pained when he left the Congress in 2019, but looking at how shabbily the party treated Ashok ji after removing him unceremoniously… I no longer have any regrets for my disassociation with the Gandhi family or the Congress,” said Avantika.
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Tanwar’s relations with Hooda
When the Congress fielded Tanwar from Sirsa in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, Hooda had already been Haryana’s CM for almost five years.
Tanwar came to Sirsa with the reputation of being the IYC president and a confidant of Rahul.
On his visits to Sirsa, Hooda used to give Tanwar much importance, and their relations appeared to be harmonious for five years.
On one occasion, Hooda is said to have reprimanded Gopal Kanda, then a minister in his government, and refused to lay the foundation stone for a community centre being made by him when he found Tanwar’s name missing from the plaque.
It was only when Kanda’s younger brother brought Tanwar, who had refused to join the event, to the venue that Hooda laid the foundation stone.
Tanwar was named Haryana Pradesh Congress Committee chief days before the 2014 parliamentary polls.
The Hooda-Tanwar equation began to sour during the assembly polls later that year.
Tanwar is said to have been against giving tickets to a few of Hooda’s loyalists in Sirsa, and the latter didn’t like this.
The relations remained strained, but the majority of Congress MLAs were believed to be on Hooda’s side.
In October 2016, when Congress workers gathered in New Delhi to welcome Rahul Gandhi on his return from his Kisan Yatra, Tanwar was injured in an alleged attack by party workers.
Tanwar then alleged that Hooda’s loyalists had attacked him (Hooda dismissed the allegations).
When Tanwar was admitted in the Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital for his injuries, his visitors included the then CM Manohar Lal Khattar of the BJP.
‘An asset’
Varun Chaudhary, Congress MLA from Haryana’s Mullana and a young Dalit face of the state Congress, said Tanwar had done himself harm and lost his credibility by switching political parties frequently.
“The Congress made Tanwar state chief of the party. But he quit the party when the Congress leadership replaced him after giving him more than five years in office,” he told ThePrint.
“Why he chose to join the Aam Aadmi Party and why he has resigned now is something only he knows better,” he said. “But now he is joining the BJP. Will the BJP make him the state president of the party?”
Arjun Singh Kadian, an assistant professor and author of the book ‘Land of Gods: The Story of Haryana’, who is currently a fellow at Prime Minister Museum and Library (PMML), New Delhi, said Tanwar’s exit from the Congress was largely due to his strained relations with Hooda.
“In Haryana, any leader who wants to have his independent politics doesn’t survive, because Hooda is so powerful that he won’t allow anyone else to make a place of his own,” he added.
“I think Tanwar’s decisions to go to the TMC and the AAP were a mistake because, in Haryana, the Congress, the Chautalas and the BJP are the three alternatives and no other party can think of making a mark,” said Kadian.
However, Haryana BJP spokesperson Sanjay Sharma described Tanwar as a political leader with a big profile in state politics.
“Tanwar’s father-in-law was a big leader in the Congress. He was a close confidant of Rahul Gandhi. The way he was treated in the Congress… only showed how Dalit leaders are treated by that party in Haryana where Bhupinder Singh Hooda’s writ runs,” he added.
“Tanwar was even beaten up and he had accused Hooda’s people of that. Now, Kumari Selja, another Dalit leader, is being sidelined in Haryana,” said Sharma.
Asked what Tanwar brings to the table for the BJP given his frequent shifting of political parties, Sharma said Tanwar was left with no option but to leave the Congress.
“In the 2019 assembly polls, Tanwar supported candidates who had the potential to defeat the Congress. In the process, he supported a few BJP candidates, too, in Ambala,” he added.
“Had he joined the BJP at that time it would have been better for him because the AAP doesn’t have a future in Haryana. However, he is welcome at the party and I am sure he will be an asset for the BJP.”
(Edited by Sunanda Ranjan)
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