The move, which has the seal of the Gandhis, may have been a year in the making, sources say. They claim it was even planned before Mallikarjun Kharge was elected Congress president.
With this appointment, Maken, a third-generation politician and considered a close confidant of the Gandhis, joins a prestigious list of Congress leaders who’ve held this role before him, including Sitaram Kesri, Pranab Mukherjee, Ahmed Patel, and Motilal Vohra.
In a way, it brings his political journey full circle.
In 1984, he was appointed as the treasurer of the National Students’ Union of India (NSUI), the Congress’s student wing. The next four decades spanned student politics in Delhi University, navigating the capital’s power corridors under and against Sheila Dikshit, and serving as minister in the UPA government. But though Maken may have been down several times, he was never out.
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Sheila Dikshit’s protégé and critic
In 1985, while studying at Hansraj College, Ajay Maken was elected president of the Delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU), making him the first NSUI member to hold the post. But it was also a year marred by tragedy. His uncle, Lalit Maken, an MP, was killed by three Sikh militants as retribution for his alleged involvement in the anti-Sikh riots after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984.
Ajay Maken, though, continued to ascend the political ladder, occupying posts in the Indian Youth Congress and the Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee (DPCC) over the next few years.
In 1993, he made his debut in the assembly elections, contesting from Rajouri Garden in Delhi. He went on to clinch consecutive victories from this seat in 1998 and 2003.
Unlike his father, who contested polls for the first and only time in a by-election in 1973, Ajay Maken was never a reluctant politician.
After his assembly win in 1998, he was appointed as then CM Sheila Dikshit’s parliamentary secretary and was considered her protégé. Thereafter, in 2001, he was appointed as minister of Power, Transport and Tourism in the Delhi government, tasked with implementing Dikshit’s pet projects on clean air and power privatisation. At a time when Sheila Dikshit’s entry into Delhi politics as an “outsider” from Uttar Pradesh riled many in the Delhi unit, Maken was seen as her trusted lieutenant.
However, cracks started appearing in the relationship after Dikshit’s son, Sandeep Dikshit, entered the political fray.
In the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, Maken was made to contest from the relatively tough New Delhi seat, as opposed to West Delhi from where he was MLA.
Sandeep Dikshit was given the East Delhi seat. Both won, but Maken’s victory was by a slim margin of 1,200 votes.
It was the first time he entered Parliament.
According to party sources, Maken, at the time, was unhappy at Sandeep’s quick ascent. They said he felt that he had greater political and electoral experience than Sandeep and was unhappy with Sheila Dikshit’s inclination to promote her son’s political career.
From then on, there was a clear division within Delhi Congress, with Maken leading a faction against the Chief Minister. In 2005, due to pressure from both the Maken and Jagdish Tytler camps within the DPCC, Sheila Dikshit had to order a rollback of power tariff hikes. Reports from the time claim that Maken had internally called for the CM’s resignation, citing her handling of the situation as “mismanagement”.
Years later, when Maken became the chief of the DPCC in 2015, Sandeep Dikshit accused him of conspiring to defame his mother. Sandeep said that Maken had been egging journalists on to do stories against his mother as she was a source of concern for the Delhi leadership which “prospered by being her counterpoint”.
At the time, Sheila Dikshit had also blamed Maken for the party’s dismal performance first in the Delhi assembly elections of 2015 and then in the municipality elections of 2017.
However, Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) became instrumental in bringing the two together. In 2018, Dikshit and Maken put up a united front after 20 AAP MLAs were disqualified from the Delhi assembly due to “office of profit” allegations. The Congress, at the time, smelt an opportunity to reap political dividends.
Confidant of the Gandhis
Over the years, Ajay Maken grew closer to the Gandhi family. Sources say he was even a contender for the post of Congress president when Rajasthan CM Ashok Gehlot withdrew from the race.
Maken was one of Rahul Gandhi’s “Young Turks” who were elected to the Lok Sabha for the first time in 2004. Maken was 40 then.
This group also included leaders like Sachin Pilot, Jyotiraditya Scindia, RPN Singh, Milind Deora, and Jiten Prasada. Back then, they were seen as the new generation of the Congress party. However, Scindia, Singh, and Prasada have since left the Congress to join the BJP. Of the remaining group, only Maken and Pilot still hold significant positions in the party.
“He was elected to Parliament for the first time in 2004, but he did not like being equated with the others in the group. He believed that he had more electoral and political experience than them. He, however, never bad-mouthed the Gandhis. He knew what to say when and that had led to his elevation both in the UPA and in the party,” said a Congress insider.
In 2006, Maken was appointed as the Union minister of state for Urban Development. This was followed by his appointments as minister of state for Home under P Chidambaram in 2009 and then as MoS (independent charge) for Sports and Youth Affairs in 2011, shortly after the infamous Commonwealth Games corruption scandal broke out.
In 2012, he became the youngest cabinet minister in the government when he was made minister for Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation. This was Maken’s last stint in the UPA government.
In 2013, he made his way back into the AICC as general secretary in-charge for communications, replacing veteran Congress leader Janardan Dwivedi.
Party insiders say that Maken’s close relationship with Rahul Gandhi and the need for a trusted ally to build the latter’s image ahead of the 2014 elections were the reasons for the move.
“It is difficult to say what led to his connection with the Gandhis. Maybe because there were assassinations in both families. But Maken has always been in their good books,” said a senior Congress leader.
The leader further alleged that the infamous incident where Rahul Gandhi trashed a UPA-promulgated ordinance in 2013 was actually Maken’s idea.
Gandhi had strongly criticised this ordinance, which aimed to overturn a Supreme Court ruling disqualifying MPs and MLAs from their seats upon receiving a minimum two-year sentence.
Gandhi’s tirade against the ordinance took place at the Press Club in New Delhi, with Maken seated next to him.
“At the time he thought that this would establish Gandhi as his own person and give him some mileage ahead of 2014. Unfortunately, that backfired,” the leader said.
He added, however, that Rahul Gandhi’s “hold over the party is now complete” given the presence of loyalists in key posts— Maken as treasurer, KC Venugopal as general secretary (organisation), as well as Randeep Surjewala and Jitendra Singh as AICC in-charges for Madhya Pradesh and Assam respectively.
Rajasthan row
After his stint as general secretary in-charge of communications, Maken was appointed as the DPCC chief in 2015. He stayed in the role till 2019 and was appointed general secretary in-charge of Rajasthan in 2020.
In June 2022, he was fielded by the party for the Rajya Sabha elections from Haryana. However, cross voting by Congress MLAs led to his defeat against media baron Kartikeya Sharma.
He, however, stayed general secretary of Rajasthan until the infamous 25 September incident last year shook things up.
On that day, Maken and Mallikarjun Kharge (who was not then party president) had called a meeting of the Congress legislative party (CLP) in Jaipur.
However, about 90 MLAs loyal to CM Ashok Gehlot boycotted the meeting and held a parallel meeting. The agenda of the CLP meeting was to pass a one-line resolution authorising the Congress president to choose a new CM of Rajasthan, as Gehlot was slated to file his nomination for the president post.
Congress sources said that the high command was looking to install Gehlot in Delhi and Sachin Pilot as CM of Rajasthan.
In the wake of the incident, after which Gehlot had to pull out of the race for Congress president, the party issued show-cause notices to three Rajasthan MLAs: Shanti Dhariwal, Mahesh Joshi, and Dharmendra Rathore.
Shortly thereafter, in November 2022, Maken resigned as the Rajasthan in-charge. Sources at the time said that Maken was upset at being labelled a Pilot supporter and the fact that he would have to work during Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra with the MLAs who had disrespected him and the party by violating the high command’s order for a CLP meeting.
In a letter to Congress president Kharge, Maken expressed his “inability and unwillingness” to continue.
In Congress circles, this resignation was seen as a pro-Gandhi move to settle the situation in the state ahead of the yatra.
Notably, when the Bharat Jodo Yatra entered Rajasthan in December last year, the three showcaused MLAs had not been handed any punishment. Instead, they were made in-charges of the yatra in the Gurjar-dominated areas where Pilot has influence.
“Ajay Maken does not consider it a defeat, though,” said the Congress leader. “He says that to move forward, you need to take a few steps back. His appointment as treasurer shows that.”
(Edited by Asavari Singh)
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