Chandigarh: The Congress high command seems to have found a way to invigorate its fractured Haryana unit: The party has decided that all those vying to become chief minister in the event of a Congress victory in the 2019 assembly elections will have to first prove their mettle in the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls, top party sources told ThePrint.
The Haryana assembly polls are due later this year, and the results of the parliamentary polls are bound to have a major impact on the prospects of every party.
But the Congress is said to have decided to go a step further and use the Lok Sabha polls as a “preliminary” examination for its top state leaders, most of whom are at each other’s throats.
The claimants
The Haryana Congress is largely divided into two camps: One led by former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and the other by state party president Ashok Tanwar.
While Hooda is a mass Jat leader, Tanwar commands leadership over the state’s Dalit vote bank. Apart from these two, other leaders of the state — Randeep Singh Surjewala, Kumari Selja, Kiran Chaudhry and Kuldip Bishnoi — have their own tiny fiefdoms, each warring with the other.
Most of these satraps are eyeing nomination as the Congress’ chief ministerial candidate, and to test their popularity, the party will either field the leaders themselves, or a close relative, in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.
While Hooda is being considered for the Jat-dominated Sonepat seat, his son Deepender, a sitting MP from Rohtak, has been finalised to contest the same seat once again.
Hooda senior is also being considered for the constituency of Faridabad, for which Karan Dalal, a relatives of his, and former MP Avtar Singh Bhadana are also claimants.
Chaudhary’s daughter Shruti is likely to be fielded from the family’s traditional seat of Bhiwani-Mahendragarh, and Bishnoi from the family seat of Hisar. Industrialist-turned-politician Naveen Jindal, a former Kurukshetra MP, is likely to take another shot at the seat.
Kumari Selja, currently a Rajya Sabha member, is said to have been finalised to contest from the reserved seat of Ambala, and Tanwar from his pocket borough Sirsa.
Former state finance minister Captain Ajay Yadav is being considered for Gurgaon. Former Vidhan Sabha speaker Kuldeep Sharma or his son Pandit Panchari could get the Karnal ticket.
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Show of unity
Congress president Rahul Gandhi sounded the poll bugle in the state when he addressed a rally at Jagadhri in Haryana’s Yamunanagar Friday.
The rally was part of the five-day ‘Parivartan Yatra’ organised by the Congress after Hooda was made the head of the party’s 15-member coordination committee last month. Apart from Surjewala and Bishnoi, top leaders of the state Congress participated in the yatra, led by party veteran and state in-charge Ghulam Nabi Azad.
The yatra, which was primarily a bus journey across the state’s 10 Lok Sabha constituencies, was aimed at bringing the leaders together to spend time with one another and iron out their differences.
“Also, it was to send a message to Haryana’s public that the party leaders were united. It also invigorated the cadre,” said a state Congress leader.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the Congress won only one of the 10 seats in the state, Rohtak. The party came third in Kurukshetra, Hisar, Bhiwani-Mahendragarh and Gurgaon. Shruti Chaudhry was the party’s candidate from Bhiwani-Mahendragarh, Jindal from Kurukshetra, Sampat Singh from Hisar, and Rao Dharampal from Gurgaon.
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