Gurugram: When the 15th Haryana assembly convenes for its Monsoon Session from Friday, it would mark a dubious milestone in the state’s legislature’s history—the third consecutive session without a designated Leader of the Opposition.
This unprecedented situation underscores the Congress party’s continuing organisational turmoil following its shock electoral defeat in the October 2024 polls which went against pre-poll predictions of a comfortable victory.
Former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, the party’s biggest mass leader in the state and frontrunner for the post, has been battling detractors namely Randeep Surjewala and Kumari Selja, who enjoy proximity with the high command.
This non-appointment of the LoP has left an institutional vacuum in the 90-member Haryana assembly, where the Congress had 37 seats against the 48 seats won by the ruling BJP with a vote share difference of less than one percent. The Congress got 39.09 percent votes against 39.94 of the BJP in the 2024 Haryana assembly polls.
Technically, the Congress has enough numbers to stake its claim for the LoP post.
The 15th Assembly constituted after the elections held its first session (Winter Session) from November 19 to 25 in 2024. In 2025, the assembly met for the Budget Session from March 7 to 28. And now, it will be meeting from August 22 to 26 for this year’s Monsoon Session.
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Post-poll dilemma
Jyoti Mishra, an assistant political science professor at Mohali’s Amity University, told ThePrint the Congress has been left with a dilemma following the October 2024 assembly elections, which went against all exit poll forecasts.
She said that top pollsters had predicted a smooth Congress win and some of them indicated that the party would not only breach the halfway mark on its own but can get 55 to 60 seats in the 90-member assembly. The results turned out to be a crushing defeat, which left the party’s state unit in a shambles.
While talking to ThePrint on the condition of anonymity, a Haryana Congress MLA indicated the leadership crisis has been further aggravated by factional battles and the lack of proper interest from the party’s central brass as far as the issue of LoP is concerned.
“Though the party has been working hard setting up organisation in the state, the central leadership is not showing the same kind of alacrity in the matter,” the MLA said.
The episode has been embarrassing for the state Congress in general and former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda in particular. He was the Leader of the Opposition between 2019 and 2024.
The Haryana government in December last year issued a notice to Hooda to vacate his official bungalow in Chandigarh Sector 7. He is yet to vacate the premises, seeking more time.
The waiting game
B.K. Hariprasad, the incharge of the All India Congress Committee for Haryana, admitted the delay but was hopeful of a swift resolution. “The process for the election of the LoP is in progress and it will be completed very soon,” he told ThePrint Thursday.
The reasons he outlined for the delay threw light on the intricacies of decision-making within the Congress hierarchy.
“RahulJi (Rahul Gandhi, Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha) is engaged in his yatra (in Bihar). Even VenugopalJi (K.C. Venugopal, general secretary, incharge, organisation in the AICC) is equally engaged. I attempted to contact him (Venugopal) yesterday, but was unable to do so as he was too occupied. I will make another attempt today. Once they find time, the LoP issue in Haryana will be resolved very shortly,” Hariprasad added.
Interestingly, when the Congress launched the process for setting up organisation in the state earlier this year, it was thought the party would address the issue of LoP too. But, this didn’t happen.
The Congress has launched a long-overdue organisational shake-up, with Rahul Gandhi setting the process rolling in a day-long trip to Chandigarh 4 June.
In a chain of meetings with senior leaders as part of the ‘Sangathan Srijan Abhiyan’ (organisation creation campaign), Gandhi stressed zero tolerance to factionalism, merit-based appointments, and developing ideology-driven workers instead of workers with “links to so and so”.
The exercise, the biggest shake-up in the Haryana Congress in 11 years, reached its climax recently with the announcement of 32 district presidents, marking a transition away from the party’s historically Jat-dominated base towards wider caste representation, including OBCs and Dalits, as an attempt to match the BJP’s social engineering.
Yet, the important question of the Leader of Opposition remains unresolved.
The significance of LoP
The Leader of the Opposition performs a number of crucial roles, right from participating in the business advisory committee meetings, to spearheading opposition business in the house, liaison with other opposition parties, and perhaps most importantly, ensuring that the ruling party is subjected to proper scrutiny of its decisions and policies.
“The Leader of the Opposition is not merely a ceremonial figure but a key component of our parliamentary system,” the Congress MLA quoted earlier explained. “Their absence means the voice of the opposition gets watered down, making parliamentary oversight less effective.”
The LoP is also privileged to be consulted on some appointments, such as in statutory bodies and commissions. In the case of Haryana, this void has resulted in the institutional role of the opposition in governance being undermined for almost 10 months.
When the state government was to make appointments to the posts of chief information commissioner and information commissioners in May, the government wrote to the Congress requesting the party to nominate a representative as the party didn’t have an LoP.
The party’s state president, Udai Bhan, had then nominated Hooda for this purpose.
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)
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