EVER SINCE Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra entered Assam, there have been constant skirmishes between Congress leaders and crowds wielding BJP flags or the police. From the march route, to Rahul’s thwarted plans to visit a revered shrine around the same time as the Ram Temple consecration, and the face-off with the police in Guwahati on Tuesday, the Yatra has faced hiccups, unlike its smoother run even through conflict-hit Manipur.

A sideshow has been the war of words between Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and Rahul – a script that sounds familiar to many in the Congress. Since he left the Congress to join the BJP in 2015, Sarma has been scathing about his former party, particularly Rahul, making it difficult to separate the personal from the political in their Yatra encounters.

The bitter history

A long-time Congress leader and one of the party’s most prominent Assam faces, Sarma had a bitter parting of ways with the party after he saw his ambitions curtailed in favour of former CM Tarun Gogoi’s son Gaurav. Sarma’s appeals to the high command also went unanswered, with Gaurav seen as part of Rahul’s inner circle.

In an autobiography released last year, another former Congress leader, Ghulam Nabi Azad, wrote that it was Rahul who blocked Sarma’s elevation as CM.

In the book Azaad, Azad said he was asked to go to Assam as an observer by then Congress president Sonia Gandhi when Sarma revolted against Gogoi “sometime during Gogoi’s third term”. “I called Himanta and his group to Delhi; he came with 45-plus MLAs to my residence… A few days later, I asked Gogoi to come to Delhi or send his MLAs. He sent seven MLAs who were supporting him… I reported the situation to Sonia ji, who remarked that it was obvious that Himanta had a clear majority and should be the new CM. She asked me to go to Assam the following day along with the general secretary in-charge and oversee the formal election of Himanta as the new leader. The evening before we were to proceed to Assam, Rahul, who had not been in the loop of deliberations so far, telephoned me with a request to cancel the visit to Assam. Instead, he asked me to visit his home the next morning along with the general secretary in charge of Assam.”

Azad added: “When we arrived at Rahul’s residence the next morning, we saw Tarun Gogoi and his son, Gaurav Gogoi, sitting with him. Rahul told us bluntly that there would be no change in leadership. We pointed out to him that Himanta had the majority of MLAs and would rebel and quit the party. ‘Let him go,’ Rahul said. The meeting was over.”

The senior leader said that he then met Sonia and told her what had happened. “Despite understanding the disastrous consequences that lay ahead, it is rather unfortunate that she did not assert herself as the party president. Instead, she asked me to request Himanta to not rock the boat.”

Sarma’s departure story

Since leaving the Congress, one anecdote that Sarma frequently recounts is a meeting with Rahul where the senior Congress leader appeared more interested in feeding biscuits to his pet dog ‘Pidi’ while he and others wanted to discuss Assam’s issues.

Sarma uses the story to underline how removed the Congress high command is from its own senior leaders.

Post-exit

In 2017, Rahul appeared to hit back at Sarma with a tweet of a video of Pidi doing Namaste while standing up on its haunches to accept a treat, adding: “Ppl been asking who tweets for this guy… I’m coming clean… it’s me… Pidi..I’m way (cooler) than him. Look what I can do with a tweet… oops… treat!”

Sarma, then a minister in the Sarbananda Sonowal government, responded: “Sir @OfficeOfRG, who knows him better than me? Still remember you busy feeding biscuits 2 him while we wanted to discuss urgent Assam’s issues.”

In 2021, at an Indian Express Adda, Sarma had again elaborated on the meetings he had had with Rahul. He said it was Sonia who had advised him to meet Rahul after he resigned as a minister from the Tarun Gogoi government in 2014.

“I met him once. That meeting was also very, very disgusting. But I did not make it public,” he said. On why it was disgusting, he said: “Because if I raise something, Mr Rahul Gandhi would say, ‘So what?’… I was there with him for 20 minutes… and I heard the word ‘so what’ not less than 50 times.”

Then he again spoke about their “famous” meeting “because of that character called Pidi”. “We went there with a conciliatory move…Mr C P Joshi… he had somehow brought a kind of a peace formula. So me, Mr Tarun Gogoi, Mr C P Joshi, Mr Anjan Dutta… we all went to meet Mr Rahul Gandhi. We started saying that elections are nearing, Assam has great potential, we can defeat the BJP… But I saw that Rahul was not interested in the meeting from the very beginning. He was playing with that dog.”

Sarma added: “Anyway, at some point of time, we were served tea and biscuits. The dog went up to the table and picked up one biscuit from the plate. So Rahul looked at me and he started smiling. So I was thinking why was he smiling, I waited with my cup, thinking that Rahul will push the calling bell and ask someone to change the plate. I waited for five minutes… After some time, I saw Mr Joshi, Gogoi all started taking biscuits from the same plate and started eating.”

According to Sarma, “I was not a frequent visitor there, but then I realised that this must be normal for everybody. This happens in all the meetings. That day I realised that enough was enough and you cannot stay with that person anymore. But having said that, I am grateful to Mr Rahul Gandhi — I would not have become the CM had it not been him, who literally shunted me out of the Congress party. If I am in this position today, it is because of that famous meeting. And also because of the fact that Rahul Gandhi did not appreciate me being in the Congress.”

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