Gurugram: Appointing Bhupinder Singh Hooda as Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader and Rao Narender Singh as Haryana Pradesh Congress Committee (HPCC) chief marks a significant shift for the Congress in Haryana from having a Jat-Dalit to Jat-OBC combination of leaders in the party’s top posts of CLP leader and HPCC chief.
For the first time in nearly two decades—18 years to be exact—the Haryana Congress leadership will not have a Dalit leader. Since 2007, a Jat-Dalit combination held the Leader of Opposition/CM and Haryana Congress president posts.
Ahead of the 2024 state assembly elections, the Jat-Dalit combination of Bhupinder Singh Hooda and Udai Bhan in the Haryana Congress leadership boosted the party’s confidence. The Congress started hoping that it would attain power in Haryana after being in the Opposition for 10 years. However, the verdict was a shocker not only for the Haryana Congress unit but also the Congress high command.
Since then, the party has taken nearly a year to fill the posts. The announcement of the new Jat-OBC combination in the leadership came Monday.
In Haryana, the Jat-Dalit combination at the party’s top posts started on 7 August 2007, when Phool Chand Mullana was appointed the state party president. The post had been lying vacant since Bhajan Lal’s resignation in 2006, after which, in 2007, Bhajan Lal went on to launch his party, Haryana Janhit Congress. From Mullana’s time, Hooda remained the CLP leader and CM till October 2014.
The Congress chose Ashok Tanwar—again, a Dalit leader, and then Congress MP from Sirsa—as Mullana’s replacement on 14 February 2014. Tanwar’s tenure as HPCC chief started just ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and continued for five years and 202 days.
After the end of Hooda’s term as CLP leader in 2014, Jat leader Kiran Choudhry took over and served from 2014 to 2019, thereby continuing the Jat-Dalit combination.
Then, on 4 September 2019, Kumari Selja, another Dalit leader, replaced Tanwar ahead of the 2019 Haryana assembly polls. Hooda became the CLP leader and Leader of Opposition after the 2019 assembly polls, with the Jat-Dalit combination, therefore, continuing.
On 27 April 2022, Dalit leader Udai Bhan replaced Kumari Selja, and the Jat-Dalit combination remained in place through the 2024 Lok Sabha and assembly polls.
Haryana’s SC (Scheduled Castes) voters, according to the Centre for Study on Democratic Societies (CSDS)-Lokniti data, split between the BJP (40 percent) and the Congress (42 percent) in 2024. In the 2024 assembly elections, the BJP won eight of the 17 SC-reserved seats, trailing the Congress’s nine.
The Congress had performed better during the Lok Sabha elections in the same year, countering the BJP’s 400-paar slogan by relying on the party’s campaign around threats to the Constitution. It had won 68 percent of Dalit votes, significantly more than the 24 percent secured by the BJP.
After the Lok Sabha polls, the BJP government’s sub-classification of Dalits, aimed at wooing the poorest, Valmikis among others, helped the party give competition to the Congress in the assembly elections in terms of Dalit votes.
Accounting for 20-21 percent of the state population, Haryana’s Dalits have been the poll anchors for the Congress. But some cracks are now emerging.
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No Dalit in Haryana Congress leadership
The Jat-OBC combination at the Congress’s top posts is the first such pairing in 47 years. The only other time the Congress applied this formula was from December 1972 to July 1977—the period when OBC leader Rao Nihal Singh was the state party chief. Bansi Lal, a Jat, was CLP leader at the time. He retained the post from 1968 to 1975.
This year is the first time that the state Congress chief in Haryana will be an OBC leader. The party never had an OBC chief minister.
Rao Birender Singh, who remained chief minister for 241 days in 1967, represented his own Vishal Haryana Party.
While the Congress may have decided to go with a Jat-OBC pairing, its announcement has left Dalits completely unrepresented at a top post in the party.
No other party in Haryana has a Dalit at a top post.
A Jat-OBC pairing in its Haryana leadership seems unusual for the Congress, particularly against the backdrop of Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi pushing for Dalit leaders since he became active in politics. Gandhi even made a surprise visit to Mirchpur in 2010—after the persecution of Dalits by the dominating Jat community—much to the embarrassment of the then CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda.
Political analyst Jyoti Mishra, an assistant professor in political science at Amity University, Mohali, told ThePrint that in Rao Narender Singh’s appointment as the HPCC chief, the Congress high command copied the BJP’s OBC push in politics, but what is interesting to note is that it has perhaps not calculated the costs.
“The move cuts the Dalit thread in their party that the leader, Rahul Gandhi, has been spinning so laboriously for years,” Mishra said, alluding to the under-representation of Dalits before 2007.
Ahead of Phool Chand Mullana taking over as the Congress state president on 27 August 2007, the only time the Congress had a Dalit state party chief was when Dalbir Singh, father of Kumari Selja, HPCC chief for 220 days from 3 November 1979 to 10 June 1980.
No Dalit has ever been the CM in Haryana.
Political analyst Kushal Pal, principal of Indira Gandhi National College, Ladwa, told The Print that though the appointment of Rao Narender Singh as the PCC chief seemed like an attempt to take a cue from the BJP, it also appeared unavoidable, given that the Congress’s OBC base is nearly non-existent.
“Due to distancing by the OBCs, including Yadavs, Gujjars, Sainis, Kambojs, and others, the Congress has almost completely lost its support base in South Haryana, including Gurugram, Faridabad, Palwal, Rewari and Mahendragarh districts. The only district in South Haryana where the party wins seats is Nuh, and that is because the Meo Muslims do not vote for the BJP,” he said.
Pal said Rao Narender Singh’s elevation will benefit Hooda personally too. His son Deepender Singh Hooda’s Rohtak Lok Sabha seat has the Kosli assembly segment under it. There is a sizeable number of Rao Narender Singh’s Ahir caste voters in Kosli.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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