New Delhi: Haryana has been seeing “scam after scam” ever since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power nine years ago, former chief minister and leader of opposition Bhupinder Singh Hooda has said — remarks that come before parliamentary and assembly elections in Haryana next year.
In an interview with ThePrint, Hooda, a Jat strongman who had been the chief minister from 2005 and 2014, said that when he left his position nine years ago, things had been different.
“Haryana had been number one in per capita income, per capita investment, employment generation, and sports. We had law and order where people felt safe. Farmers got remunerative prices,” the senior Congress leader said. “But now, in these nine years, people have been seeing scam after scam. We saw liquor scams, mining scams, registry scams, paper leak scams, paddy procurement scams (in 2020), recruitment scams, and many more. The government sets up a fresh Special Investigation Team (SIT) after every scam but the reports are never made public.”
Speaking to ThePrint at Talkatora Road in New Delhi, the official residence of his son and Rajya Sabha MP Deepender Singh Hooda, the former chief minister highlighted a wide range of topics — from the floods in Yamuna, the state of politics in Haryana and the assembly election next year to better remunerative prices that farmers have been demanding.
Hooda blamed last week’s floods in Delhi and nearby areas to poor management by the Haryana government — remarks that come at a time when the Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP government is engaged in a bitter blame game with the BJP government.
Here are excerpts from his interview with ThePrint.
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Haryana elections
The Congress will win most parliamentary seats in Haryana and will form the next government after the 2024 assembly election, Hooda said in his interview.
Haryana has a total of 10 parliamentary and 90 assembly seats. While the BJP swept all Lok Sabha seats in 2019, the party won 40 assembly seats the same year as against 31 of the Congress. The Jannayak Janata Party (JJP), which had made its electoral debut that year and is currently part of the ruling alliance in the state, won 10 seats.
The BJP, he said, swept to power in 2014 on lofty promises. “But now, people have realised that they (BJP) talk but they don’t perform. I’m sure we are going to win a majority of parliamentary seats from Haryana this time.”
People of the state are “fed up” with Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar and his government, he said.
“They (BJP) made lofty promises, but later admitted that these were jumlas (false promises). People have made up their minds. This time Congress will form the government in the state.”
The state that was once “No. 1 in employment is now No.1 in unemployment” levels, the former chief minister said, accusing the BJP governments at both the central and state levels of “playing with the future of the youths”.
There are 2 lakh government posts lying vacant but instead of filling up these, the government launched Kaushal Rozgar Nigam — an organisation to recruit contractual staff — in 2021 to appoint youth on a temporary basis, he said.
Hooda also criticised the controversial Agnipath scheme — the Narendra Modi government’s short-term army recruitment scheme for youngsters between 17.5 and 21 years. Thousands of people from Haryana line up for army jobs, he said, but the policy means that soldiers will be sent back home within four years.
Sports too has felt the BJP government’s apathy, according to him.
In the 2010 Commonwealth Games, the players from the state won 22 medals out of the total tally of 38, he said. “But now, all the world has seen how badly our sportspeople (read, wrestlers) have been treated by this government.”
Infighting in the Congress and party’s CM face
The former CM also addressed reports of infighting within the Congress senior leadership in the state. Media reports have repeatedly highlighted power-tussles among senior leaders such as Hooda, former Haryana Congress president Kumari Selja, Tosham MLA and former CLP leader Kiran Choudhary and Rajya Sabha MP Randeep Surjewala.
Hooda, however, dismissed such reports as “media manufactured”, and instead pointed to the fault lines within the BJP.
“Have you ever seen (senior BJP leaders) Rao Inderjit Singh, Chaudhary Birender Singh, Ram Bilas Sharma, and Chief Minister Khattar sharing a stage,” he asked, citing an instance from 2014 to prove his point.
“In 2014 (after elections that year), I asked a question in the state assembly. The CM was replying, but minister after minister kept interrupting him and trying to offer their own answer. When the CM asked Anil Vij to sit down, the latter refused to obey. The BJP lacks cohesiveness.”
Asked who would be the Congress’s CM face, Hooda said the party had a procedure to decide such things.
The Congress high command, he said, appoints an observer who puts forward a name after speaking to the state’s MLAs. “People have seen this procedure being followed in Karnataka.”
But what happened in 2005, when he was appointed CM despite senior Congress leader Bhajan Lal’s claims of having more MLAs in his support? That wasn’t true, Hooda said.
“When I was appointed the CM in 2005, the party’s observers met all the MLAs. When (former chief minister ) Bhajan Lal boycotted the CLP meeting sensing defeat, only 18 out of 67 MLAs accompanied him. And when he eventually left the Congress, only 3 MLAs were with him.”
A miffed Bhajan Lal eventually left the Congress to start the Haryana Janhit Congress in 2007.
Yamuna floods
To a query about last week’s floods not only in Delhi-NCR but also parts of Haryana, Hooda said this wasn’t the first time that such a large volume of water was released from Hathni Kund, a concrete barrage located in Haryana’s Yamunanagar district. Water released from the flood has been cited as partly being responsible for the Delhi flood.
Twelve of Haryana’s 22 districts have seen flood after heavy rain caused flashed floods in north India earlier this month. Of these, six — Yamunanagar, Karnal, Panipat, Sonipat, Faridabad, and Palwal — were flooded because of Yamuna’s rising waters.
In his interview, Hooda said that in 2006, eight lakh cusecs of water were released from the concrete barrage — twice the volume that had been released this time. But there was no flood then because it was managed better, he said.
He also blamed the situation on government apathy, saying that during a tour of flood-affected districts of the state last week, he found that several panchayats had petitioned for drains to be cleaned out. “But the (state) government paid no heed.”
On MSP
Hooda also spoke about implementing better remunerative prices for farmers — a major poll issue in the state. Farmers have been demanding the implementation of the Swaminathan report and giving better MSP — the minimum price set by the government for certain agricultural products.
Set up in 2004 by the then Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA), the eight-member national commission chaired by renowned agriculturist Prof. M.S. Swaminathan was mandated to recommend agrarian reforms. The panel submitted five reports between December 2004 and October 2006.
In his interview, Hooda, who was asked about Haryana BJP chief O.P. Dhankar’s allegations that his government did not get the recommendations implemented, said it was the BJP that had been backpedalling on its promise of doubling farmers’ income by 2022.
He was referring to Modi’s promise of ensuring that agricultural incomes are doubled by that year.
According to him, the previous UPA government had been implementing the Swaminathan report in phases. “One of the recommendations was to make farmers debt-free,” he said. “On my initiative, the rate of interest on farmers’ loans was reduced from 14 percent to just 4 percent across the country. In Haryana, I ensured that the farmers got loans at zero percent interest.”
He added that had the BJP government implemented the Swaminathan report in its true spirit, the farmers would not have needed loans for agricultural activities.
One of the issues, according to him, is calculating MSP using the C2 formula instead of the A2+FL basis used now. The A2+FL formula that’s used now factors in all paid-out input costs (A2) that farmers incur on seeds, fertilisers, pesticides, hired labour, leased land, fuel and irrigation and adds to this unpaid family labour (FL).
However, farmers argue that this formula means a substantially lower MSP than what they can get if it is calculated using the C2 formula as recommended by the Swaminathan panel. Often seen as a more comprehensive system of calculation, the C2 formula factors in rent and interest foregone on land and machinery over and above the A2+FL rate.
Asked why Haryana’s Congress unit did not know of senior party leader Rahul Gandhi’s visit to the state earlier this month, Hooda said that was just how the leader functioned.
Rahul had reportedly travelled to a village in Haryana’s Sonipat to speak to farmers there and was even pictured planting paddy with them.
“He (Rahul) likes meeting people and knowing their issues. He met mechanics, went to paddy fields and even met truck drivers in the USA,” Hooda said, referring to the US visit in June.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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