Former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and his son and former MP, Deepender Singh Hooda, will hold a 'Parivartan Karyakarta Sammelan' at Rohtak on Sunday to mobilise the Congress party workers to bring about a change of government and overthrow the Manohar Lal Khattar-led BJP government in the state. This will be followed by a 'maha rally' on August 18.
Deepender Hooda's Facebook page has photographs announcing the event. While these photos have the father-son duo, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi are conspicuously absent, as is Haryana Pradesh Congress Committee president Ashok Tanwar.
On Friday, when the last session of the Haryana Vidhan Sabha began, Congress Legislature Party leader Kiran Choudhary was allotted the seat normally given to the leader of the opposition in the house. But she was, as Speaker Kanwar Pal Gujjar stated, not the leader of the opposition, as the Congress MLAs had not given him a letter electing her to the position.
The Congress in Haryana had become the largest opposition party after the split in the Indian National Lok Dal, whose leader Abhay Chautala was the leader of opposition (LoP).
The Congress high command is yet to take a call on who will be the LoP, Bhupinder Hooda had said, adding that once this is done, the legislators will meet and pass a resolution. The assembly elections are barely three months away.
If this does not reflect the fragility of the once powerful Haryana Pradesh Congress, the fact that Hooda and the HPCC president Ashok Tanwar have shared a stage just once in five years may. So deep is the division that the only time when Hooda and Tanwar were together was when Rahul Gandhi as the Congress president attended a rally in the state.
Even as they await the Congress high command's decision on the LoP, the fact that Bhupinder Hooda and his son have begun the work in the run-up to the elections, without waiting for a Congress president has resulted in murmurs among party seniors as well as others.
“It all seems like it will be a Hooda & Hooda party fighting the BJP, alongside a number of smaller parties. We will have to wait and see whether the Congress is visible as a party ready for the fight,” commented a senior leader from the party, not wanting to be identified. But there are party loyalists who are happy that “some kind of campaign work” has begun under the symbol of the Congress.
While Tanwar is also active on the ground, the Haryana society could be pulled in different directions. Tanwar is a dalit leader while the Hoodas represent the Jat section at a time when the INLD, also representing the Jats, is crumbling.
