More than a year and a half after he left the party, former Congress national general secretary Imran Masood returned to the party fold on Saturday, with the party terming it as “ghar wapsi”.
Masood, who wields influence in and around Saharanpur in western Uttar Pradesh, moved to the Samajwadi Party (SP) in January 2022 before the state elections and then joined the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) last October. He was expelled from the Mayawati-led party in August this year for “anti-party activities and indiscipline”.
Masood said that he would apologize to Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra for letting her down. He also asserted that he had told his supporters that he would now not leave the Congress “till going to the grave”.
He added Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra was transformational for politics and following the cross-country march, the Congress won Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka, and now was going to win in four states.
Masood thanked Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge, former party chief Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi and AICC general secretary K C Venugopal for the induction.
Welcoming Masood into the party, Congress Rajya Sabha member Rajeev Shukla said this was Masood’s “ghar wapsi” (homecoming) and he has now vowed to never leave the party.
Masood’s re-entry would give the party an edge in the Saharanpur area at a time when the parties in the INDIA bloc of Opposition parties, a grouping of 28 parties to take on BJP-led NDA, are mulling over entering seat-sharing negotiations for the Lok Sabha elections. The party also benefits as it doesn’t have a leader of Masood’s stature in Western UP.
Early in March 2014, Masood was arrested on charges of hate speech after he threatened to “chop” Narendra Modi, who was the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, “into pieces”. He was the Congress candidate from Saharanpur for the Lok Sabha elections that year and made the remark during the election campaign.
A nephew of former Union minister late Rasheed Masood, Imran Masood was elected MLA from Muzaffarabad seat (Behat seat after delimitation) in Saharanpur district in 2007 state elections. He had also contested the Lok Sabha election on a Congress ticket in 2014 and 2019 from Saharanpur. He lost both the elections to BJP and BSP respectively.