New Delhi: Former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda has ruled out any possibility of an alliance with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) for the upcoming assembly elections in October.
In an interview with The Print Thursday, Hooda — the leader of opposition in the state assembly — said the Congress’s alliance with the AAP in Haryana was only for the Lok Sabha polls.
“The central leadership of the Congress decided to give one seat in Haryana to AAP for the parliamentary elections. However, as far as the upcoming assembly elections are concerned, the party doesn’t need any alliance with the AAP or any other political party,” Hooda said.
As part of the seat-sharing arrangement of the INDIA bloc, the Congress conceded the Kurukshetra Lok Sabha seat to AAP but its candidate Sushil Gupta lost to industrialist Naveen Jindal of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) by a margin of 29,021 votes.
The Congress contested nine seats and won Rohtak, Sirsa, Hisar, Sonipat and Ambala, with the BJP winning the other five.
The former CM said the results of the Lok Sabha elections showed that the people of Haryana were fed up with the BJP government due to its anti-people policies and misgovernance.
“When we (Congress) lost power in 2014, Haryana was number one in per capita income, per capita investment, number one in employing youths and number one in sports. After 10 years of misgovernance by the BJP, the state is now number one in unemployment, in inflation and in having a poor law-and-order situation. Those who brought glory for Haryana by winning gold medals in sports now have to sit in the streets to seek justice and are being mistreated by the government,” Hooda said.
On the Lok Sabha results, Hooda said the Congress, along with AAP, had improved its vote share to 47.62 percent from 28 percent in 2019. The BJP’s vote share had been reduced to 46.11 percent from 58 percent in 2019, he added.
He said the people of Haryana had understood the divisive politics of the BJP. He cited the example of the Ahir-dominated Kosli assembly segment of the Rohtak parliamentary constituency, where his MP son Deepender Singh Hooda led over his BJP rival Arvind Sharma this time, while in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, he was behind by 75000 votes because the BJP’s divisive politics worked.
Hooda said the BJP had mastered the art of manipulating election victories by playing divisive politics without caring to fulfil the promises made to people.
“They (BJP) promised they would double farmers’ income but that never happened. Rather, the cost of inputs has doubled. More than doubled, rather. Look at the rates of diesel, fertilisers and pesticides. They are skyrocketing. Compare their current prices with those in 2014 and you will know how many times the input costs of agricultural items have increased in these 10 years,” said Hooda, who was Haryana CM from 2005 to 2014.
He said the BJP had promised to implement the Swaminathan Commission’s report, which guaranteed minimum support price (MSP) to farmers on the C2 formula. But after coming to power, the BJP refused to implement it.
C2 is the comprehensive cost of production, including rent and interest foregone on land and machinery owned by farmers. According to the Swaminathan Commission’s report, the formula to calculate MSP would be MSP = C2+ 50 percent of C2. The commission recommended that the MSP should be 1.5 times the farmers’ input costs.
Hooda said if the Congress came to power, he would ensure that farmers got MSP for their produce in Haryana. “I was chairman of the Working Group on Agriculture Production (WGAP) constituted by then PM Manmohan Singh after the Swaminathan Commission’s report came in. The chief ministers of Bihar, Punjab and West Bengal were also members of the group. My report recommended MSP to farmers on C2 plus 50 percent formula,” he added.
In reply to a question, Hooda said only time would tell how Prime Minister Narendra Modi will handle coalition politics, as this will be his first experience with numbers-wielding allies.
“There are reports that Telugu Desam Party chief Chandrababu Naidu is demanding special status for Andhra Pradesh. There are also reports that alliance partners are demanding other things like important cabinet berths. They will try to get the most out of this alliance,” he said.
He added, however, that coalition governments were not new to India and such governments have worked in the past, too.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)
Also read: Jalebis & ‘clean sweep’— on campaign trail, Hooda predicts sweet victory for INDIA bloc in Haryana
Congress should better watch out as it also seems to be suffering from much avoidable ‘overconfidence’ which possibly caused huge political set back for the BJP in just concluded Lok Sabha elections.