- Saturday, May 03, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
FORMER student leader of India’s renowned Jawaharlal Nehru University Kanhaiya Kumar on Tuesday (28) joined the Indian National Congress in the presence of former party president Rahul Gandhi. However, the occasion was more dominated by reports that Kumar removed the air-conditioner (AC) that he had installed in the office of the Communist Party of India (CPI) in Patna, the capital of the northern Indian state of Bihar.
CPI office in-charge Indu Bhushan Verma said Kumar had taken out the AC from the room two months ago.
Party leader Vijay Mishra said Kumar had taken permission from the party before removing the machine and he was allowed as the party said that it was his property.
“There was some stuff he took. He still has something similar lying in the room. This is not a big deal, Kanhaiya did a lot for the CPI. What is the big deal to carry a Rs 50,000 AC? That too his own,” Mishra told the media.
Kumar, who had stolen the headlines in the mid-2010s when student politics in JNU had turned hot, contested the 2019 Lok Sabha elections from Begusarai in Bihar on the CPI’s ticket but lost to Bharatiya Janata Party’s Giriraj Singh, who is currently a minister in the Narendra Modi government.
On Tuesday, Kumar was formally inducted into the Congress at the party headquarters in New Delhi. There, he said the grand-old party of India was the country’s “most democratic party” and its only hope.
Besides Kumar, independent lawmaker from the western state of Gujarat Jignesh Mevani also pledged support to the Congress, saying that while he has not formally joined the party, he joined its ideology.
