 "Kanhaiya Kumar,Kanhaiya")
From students’ union leader to being Rahul Gandhi’s bet for the Congress party in Delhi, Kanhaiya Kumar’s political journey has been a thriller. On April 14, Congress announced Kumar’s candidature from the North East Delhi Lok Sabha constituency against BJP MP Manoj Tiwari.
North East Delhi has a large population of people who migrated from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and are called purvanchalis. Kumar, 37, doesn't hail from that region strictly but his Bihari heritage positions him as a candidate against Tiwari, a true purvanchali. Besides being portrayed as a purvanchali, Kumar's candidacy is also seen as an effort by Congress to consolidate Muslim votes.
With more than 30 per cent of voters in North East Delhi being Muslims, Kumar's stand against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) helped him book his candidature for Congress. In 2020, tensions surrounding CAA led to full-fledged riots in the constituency. Kumar's criticism of the CAA and perceived alignment with the minority community have positioned him favourably in Congress's strategy to attract Muslim voters in the constituency.
Kumar was fielded in the constituency after the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party, which governs Delhi, came together under the INDIA alliance, Kanhaiya, as a former student leader, is expected to get the support of Left student associations. Kumar, a former member of the Communist Party of India (CPI), joined Congress in September 2021. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, he contested from the Begusarai seat in Bihar, known as "Leningrad," challenging BJP's Giriraj Singh. Despite securing nearly 22 per cent of the vote, Kumar lost to the BJP.
Kumar rose to national prominence after being accused of raising anti-national slogans when he was the president of Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union. Despite the negative publicity, he garnered support from those opposed to BJP's rise to power in 2014. In the 2019 elections in Bihar’s Begusarai Lok Sabha seat, Kumar challenged BJP leader Giriraj Singh and Tanweer Hasan of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD). When Kumar joined the Congress in 2021, his new party's alliance with Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) came under stress during seat-sharing negotiations. The RJD ensured the Congress did not get to contest in Begusarai.
According to news reports, Rahul Gandhi backed Kumar’s candidature in Delhi. Kumar accompanied Gandhi in his Bharat Jodo Yatras, earning the Congress leader’s trust. Reports said Kumar's nomination caused dissent in local Congress ranks, who wanted party veterans like Arvind Singh Lovely or Sandeep Dixit to contest against Manoj Tiwari.
Rahul is also attempting to build his own base in the Congress and Kanhaiya Kumar can help him, political analysts have said. Kumar, as a public figure, openly challenged the Narendra Modi government in 2016. His attitude and oratory are said to have captured Rahul’s attention, leading to his appointment in 2023 as the All India Congress Committee (AICC) in-charge of the National Students Union of India (NSUI), the students’ wing of the Congress.
Regardless of the outcome in the North East Delhi Lok Sabha seat, Kumar is expected to get a significant role in the Congress in Delhi where it lost assembly elections in 2013.
