Gurugram: Congress party leaders in Haryana are fuming over a letter from the All India Congress Committee (AICC) asking them to seek permission from the state unit for protests and other programmes, with former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda leading a pushback against the move.
The 28 May letter signed by AICC in-charge B.K. Hariprasad, now the Karnataka Congress president, was addressed to all Haryana MPs, MLAs, former MPs and MLAs, District Congress Committee (DCC) presidents, office bearers, frontal department heads, cells, wings and party functionaries across the state.
The letter, issued from the All India Congress Committee’s Indira Bhawan office in New Delhi, says that “no agitation programme or public protest activity shall be organised in the name of the Congress Party without prior intimation and approval from the Haryana Pradesh Congress Committee (HPCC)”.
Speaking to the media in Chandigarh on Wednesday, Hooda said that the order does not apply to MLAs holding protests in their constituencies on local issues, but only for state-level protests, dharnas and press conferences.
“Party discipline is important,” Hooda told The Print on Thursday. “And whenever there is a state-level demonstration, protest or press conference, it should be coordinated. But it should not apply for such events at the district or the constituency level.”
“The MLAs and MPs have to raise issues of their constituents. They can’t be stopped from raising the issues of their constituents,” he added.
The directive listed three specific compliance requirements: complete details of any proposed programme must be submitted in advance to the HPCC office; prior approval from the HPCC must be obtained before any public announcement or execution of an event; and coordination with district and state leadership must be ensured at all levels.
Hariprasad cited the need for “proper coordination, organisational discipline, message uniformity, media management and effective political strategy” as the rationale.
The copy was marked to the PCC President, the Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader and the Chairman of the Disciplinary Committee, Haryana.
Ashok Arora, Congress MLA from Thanesar, told ThePrint that several legislators had reservations about the letter, which were expressed in the media.
“I spoke about my reservations and Rohtak MLA Bharat Bhushan Batra also spoke about it,” Arora said.
“The letter said that the MLAs could not hold a press conference or a protest without permission. However, the Congress Legislature Party leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda made it clear that MLAs and MPs could hold such events to raise the issues of their constituents.”
Batra echoed Arora’s sentiments. Speaking to ThePrint on Thursday, Batra said while party discipline was sacrosanct, MLAs can’t be stopped from raising concerns of their constituents.
Hariprasad, who has since transitioned to take charge as Karnataka Congress president, did not respond to ThePrint’s calls or messages.
State leaders defend order
State Congress chief Rao Narender Singh, however, was categorical in his defence of the directive.
“The only aim of the letter is to have discipline in the party, and no one has opposed the directions issued in it,” he told ThePrint.
He framed the directives as continuation of an earlier exercise, the training session for AICC-appointed DCC presidents at Kurukshetra in March, where Rahul Gandhi had addressed them.
“The DCC presidents were told that all events of the party in the district would be held under their banner alone in future,” he said.
Rao said the intent was to prevent the return of a pattern where different factions ran their own parallel programmes, at both the district and state levels, presenting a fractured face of the party in public.
“The only aim of the letter was to ensure that the old system where different factions held their own party programmes didn’t return and the party presented a united face during protests and other events,” he said.
When asked about at least two MLAs openly voicing their objections to the letter and CLP leader Hooda saying that legislators could not be stopped from holding constituency-level events, Rao said nothing of the sort had come to his notice.
“If there are any misunderstandings about the letter, these will be sorted out,” he said.
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)
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