With an apology and a promise, Imran Masood returns to the Congress 

Just ahead of the 2022 Assembly election, he joined the exodus from the grand old party along with Jitin Prasada, Annu Tandon and Lalitesh Tripathi. 

With an apology for leaving and a promise to remain with the Congress till his death, Uttar Pradesh politician Imran Masood returned to the party on Saturday, a year and a half after he had left. With Mr. Masood’s re-entry, the Congress gains a prominent Muslim face that could help the party consolidate the minority votes in Uttar Pradesh, but his presence could pose a problem for the expected Samajwadi Party (SP)-Congress-Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) alliance in the State. 

At a formal event held at the Congress headquarters to announce his return, Mr. Masood proclaimed, “I will stay in the Congress till I go to my grave.” He also apologised, particularly to party general secretary Priyanka Gandhi, for leaving the party. “I haven’t met her, but whenever I will, I will apologise. I know it is difficult to forgive someone who abandoned you, the way I did,” he said. 

Mr. Masood has had a checkered career, switching between the Congress, the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party. In his two previous stints with the Congress he was rewarded with plum positions. Ahead of the 2017 Assembly election, he was appointed as one of the three vice-presidents of the party in Uttar Pradesh, and ahead of the 2022 election he was made the All India Congress Committee secretary. He fought the Parliamentary election in 2014 and 2019 and the Assembly election in 2017 on a Congress ticket, but lost all of them.

In 2014, in the first pro-BJP wave, he polled four lakh votes in Saharanpur, but lost in a close contest with the BJP candidate. 

Just ahead of the 2022 Assembly election, he joined the exodus from the grand old party along with Jitin Prasada, Annu Tandon and Lalitesh Tripathi. He joined the SP citing “prevailing political conditions” and arguing that it was necessary to “avoid division of votes”. He lost the 2022 Assembly election that he fought as a SP candidate.

Despite his consecutive electoral defeats, he is considered to have a significant influence over the minority votes in western Uttar Pradesh’s parliamentary constituencies of Saharanpur, Muzaffarnagar and Kairana, which have a high minority electorate. The Congress, which does not have a Muslim leader of his stature in the region, might find his presence useful.

After his defeat in 2022, his presence in the SP was rendered untenable and within nine months, he switched to the BSP from which he was expelled in August this year for praising Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi.