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HomePoliticsHow ‘mass leaders’ Bhupinder Hooda & son kept ‘fractured’ Haryana Congress active...

How ‘mass leaders’ Bhupinder Hooda & son kept ‘fractured’ Haryana Congress active despite 9 yrs out of power

Hooda and his son Deepender are easily accessible and are seen as mass leaders. Udai Bhan’s elevation as state unit chief has made work a little easier, say veteran leaders.

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Chandigarh: Senior Congress leader and former chief minister of Haryana Bhupinder Singh Hooda joined the party’s Haath se Haath Jodo campaign from his Garhi Sampla Kiloi assembly constituency in Rohtak last Friday. 

While the two-month programme is a follow-up of Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra, it is being seen as yet another example of Hooda leading the party from the front, despite being out of power since 2014.  

In the 2014 election, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won with a clear majority and Manohar Lal Khattar replaced Hooda as the chief minister. In 2019, the BJP returned to power after striking a post-poll alliance with the Jannayak Janta Party (JJP). 

However, that hasn’t driven the state unit in the wilderness and the Hoodas — Bhupinder, who is also the Leader of Opposition, and his Rajya Sabha MP son Deepender — have kept it active. 

This is in sharp contrast to many states where the party goes dormant once it is out of power — say, in Bihar or Uttar Pradesh. It is almost inactive in Punjab where it lost power to the Aam Aadmi Party last year. Similarly, the party is nowhere to be seen in Delhi where the AAP replaced it in 2015.

Party veterans point out that Hooda is instrumental in keeping the cadre together despite the state unit being unstructured for years. They also credit Deepender with the success of the Bharat Jodo Yatra in the state. It is the Hoodas’ accessibility that has made them so popular, they said.

“Not only Hooda, even Deepender must be credited with the party’s performance during the BJP government’s rule from 2014 to 2019 and then the BJP-JJP regime since October 2019,” Prahlad Singh Gillankhera, the chief parliamentary secretary in Hooda’s regime from 2009 to 2014, told ThePrint over the phone.

Not an easy ride

It also must be noted that Hooda hasn’t got along with state unit chiefs all these years — it was only in February 2022 that the party’s central leadership named Udai Bhan, who Hooda handpicked, as state president. Udai Bhan took over as the state unit chief in the last week of April. 

Earlier, from February 2014 to September 2019, Ashok Tanwar held the post. His rivalry with Hooda is common knowledge. Later, Tanwar switched to the Trinamool Congress in November 2021 and then jumped to the AAP in April last year.

Tanwar was succeeded by Selja Kumari, who remained the state unit chief till April 2022. Again, Hooda and Kumari did not share an easy camaraderie and the rift within the state unit would regularly come to the fore. 

With Udai Bhan in the saddle, the Congress party has regularly been organising events, all focused on revealing the BJP-JJP’s ‘misrule’ — there’s a Pardafash Rally in Sonepat on 25 March, and Vipaksh Aapke Samaksh programme in Yamunanagar on 2 April.

On his part, Hooda has also lent his support to sarpanches agitating over the e-tendering process and has demanded that FIRs against them be withdrawn.

In 2021, he launched the Vipaksh Aapke Samaksh drive through which party leaders go among the public to hear their grievances.

The Jat leader and his son came out in support of the agitating farmers when they began protests against the now junked central agriculture laws in 2020. During the recently concluded Congress session in Raipur, Hooda, who heads the group constituted by the party on ‘Agriculture and Farmers’, said the party will give MSP guarantee on a formula suggested by the Swaminathan report, once it comes to power.


Also Read: ‘Officers there to give justice’ — Haryana’s Anil Vij pulls up cops after waiting woman ‘vandalises’ office


‘Unstructured unit’

A party can remain active only if its workers are motivated, former Haryana Pradesh Congress Committee (HPCC) president Phool Chand Mullana told ThePrint. 

Mullana was the HPCC chief from August 2007 to February 2014, when Hooda was the chief minister. “The Congress could not even set up its organisational structure in Haryana from 2014 to 2022 — neither during Tanwar’s tenure nor during Kumari’s,” he said.

Party sources told ThePrint that this has happened over the years because none of the top leaders in the faction-ridden state unit were on the same page when it came to inducting office-bearers, causing delays in the process, and leaving it largely unstructured.

“Now Udai Bhan is heading the party with the active support of Hooda saab. The list of office-bearers has already been forwarded to the party’s top leadership for approval. The party will soon have an organisational structure in the state,” Mullana said.

‘Hooda works for all’

Hooda has been accused of discrimination during his tenure. Addressing the issue, Mullana said, “Though some vested interests accused Hooda of regional discrimination in development during his regime, it is a fact that he worked for the betterment of all the districts of Haryana.” 

Mullana is a four-time MLA who last won assembly elections in 2015. His son Varun Chaudhary is an MLA from his traditional seat of Mullana in Ambala district.

“If Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra was successful in Haryana, much of its credit goes to Deepender who was able to inspire youths to join the campaign. Party workers see the state’s future in Deepender,” Gillankhera said.

Gillankhera himself organised a successful rally under the theme of Vipaksh Aapke Samaksh at Fatehabad on 29 May 2022, that was addressed by Hooda, Deepender, and Udai Bhan, among several senior party leaders. 


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‘Always accessible’

Dr Kamal Veer Singh who worked as an Officer of Special Duty (OSD) when Hooda was the chief minister, said the best part about the father-son duo is that they are easily accessible.

“Anyone can call Hooda or Deepender on their phone and they respond immediately. This is not so with any big leader of the state. Even when Hooda was the CM, he would take calls on his mobile phone,” said Singh.

He said Hooda never allowed any discontent against his government to set in and would always take the initiative to talk to the agitators and address their issues.

“It is the exact opposite situation now. Almost all sections of society, including sarpanches and government employees, are agitating for their demands, but the government doesn’t even bother to talk to them,” said Singh.

Aftab Ahmed, MLA from Nuh and the Deputy Leader of the Congress Legislature Party, described Hooda as the only mass leader in Haryana.

“During his tenure as the CM, Hooda worked for all sections of society. But the present regime is a non-performing government leading to a lot of resentment. The Hoodas have been able to keep the Congress in agitation mode for so long because people trust them and also, the public is fed up with the present regime,” Ahmed said to ThePrint.

However, such support hasn’t always translated into electoral success for the Hoodas. In May 2019 parliamentary polls, Hooda and Deepender lost from Sonipat and Rohtak respectively. The BJP won all ten seats in these elections. 

Hooda bounced back in the assembly polls a few months later, and the Congress won 31 seats against the BJP’s 40. It also improved on its 2014 performance when it got just 15 seats.

Haath Se Haath Jodo 

Under the two-month-long Haath Se Haath Jodo programme, the party plans to reach out to every household in Haryana. It will present a charge sheet against the BJP-led central government and a letter by Rahul Gandhi to each household.

In his campaign, Hooda is promising rights to sarpanches who are agitating against e-tendering, old pension scheme to the employees, minimum support price to farmers for their produce, 100-yard plots and 2 BHK flats to the poor families, Rs 6,000 per month in old age pension, 300 units of free electricity for every family, and revival of scheme for government jobs for sportspersons bringing medals for the country.

“Haryana was at number one in per capita investment and per capita income. But today, the state is number one in unemployment,” Hooda told ThePrint over the phone.

The former Haryana chief minister alleged that the Khattar government doesn’t respect people’s sentiments and this was the reason that all sections of the society, including farmers, sarpanches, government employees and common people were out on protests. 

(Edited by Smriti Sinha)


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