Haryana Congress hit by infighting among leaders

No consensus on a plan for the upcoming Assembly polls.

New Delhi: The Congress in Haryana has seemingly not learnt any lessons from the drubbing it received in the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections, and the party is still struggling to resolve the infighting among leaders in the state and has not been able to reorganise itself for the upcoming Assembly polls.

The infighting in Haryana Congress surfaced soon after the results for the Lok Sabha polls were announced on 23 May. During a meeting held by the party general secretary and in-charge of the state, Ghulam Nabi Azad, in Delhi to evaluate the reason for the devastating defeat of the party, several state leaders openly blamed each other.

According to sources, Congress leaders couldn’t even reach a consensus on any of the issues raised by Azad and failed to concretise any plan for the upcoming Assembly polls. Sources said that Bhupinder Singh Hooda, along with his loyalists, blamed the weak organisational structure of the party in Haryana and demanded an overhaul of the organisation in the state leadership.

However, party leaders have followed the party’s whip in the matter and have desisted from speaking to newspapers or TV channels. A Congress source told The Sunday Guardian: “Ashok Tanwar, Haryana Congress president, is in direct confrontation with former Chief Minister Bhupender Singh Hooda. The president has repeatedly refused to take any responsibility for the party’s humiliating defeat in the state and has refused to resign. The feud is preventing the party from restructuring itself for the Assembly polls.”

While Hooda wanted Tanwar’s resignation from the president’s post as that would have paved the way for the overhauling of the party in the state, Tanwar seems adamant to shift the blame on  Hooda himself for not winning even his own seat. As per a senior Congress leader, a section of Congress leaders are against giving Bhupinder Singh Hooda a free hand to lead the party in the upcoming Assembly polls and have demanded bringing in fresh faces who can revive the party in the state.

“The infighting in Congress has now become old news. Since the past several years, as many as 29 Hooda loyalist Congress leaders, including seven Haryana Congress MLAs, have been demanding a total overhaul of the party in the state,” the same source cited above said. The Congress in Haryana had put up many heavyweights in the Lok Sabha polls, including Bhupinder Singh Hooda, his son and three-time MP Deepender Hooda, state party chief Ashok Tanwar, a four-time MP and former Union Minister Kumari Selja, a six-time MLA Capt. Ajay Yadav and three-time MP and one-time MLA Avtar Bhadana, among others, but unfortunately all these leaders couldn’t make their entry to the Lok Sabha and the BJP successfully bagged all the 10 seats of the state.