Haryana | Rift in party threatens Congress's chances in election year

Even as former Congress president Rahul Gandhi tramps across Assam on his 6,700-km Manipur-to-Maharashtra Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra (BJNY) in the hope of uniting a deeply polarised country, his party colleagues in faraway Haryana are at daggers drawn.

Congress leaders and workers alike are torn between two simultaneous campaigns in Haryana, which is scheduled for Assembly polls within six months of this year’s Lok Sabha election, one steered by the party’s most influential satrap and the other by a troika whose proximity to the Congress high command is well known.

Hooda power

On January 16, two days after Rahul embarked on his BJNY from Thoubal in Manipur, the Congress’ Haryana unit started its 'Ghar, Ghar Congress, Har Ghar Congress' outreach campaign from Rohtak, the stronghold of two-term former Chief Minister and Jat strongman Bhupinder Singh Hooda.

A day later, former Union minister Kumari Selja, Rajya Sabha member Randeep Surjewala and veteran party MLA from Tosham, Kiran Choudhry – a troika now popularly branded in Haryana as SRK – launched a separate outreach journey, the 'Congress Sandesh Yatra', from Hisar.

Congress rivalry

Team SRK and Hooda both maintain that the purpose of their separate but simultaneous campaigns is to strengthen the Congress and ensure its victory in the Lok Sabha and Assembly polls. Yet, publicity material from either camp makes it evident that, just as the epigraph of Kipling’s Ballad of East and West, never the twain shall meet.

Posters, banners and other promotional material for the Ghar, Ghar Congress campaign feature photographs of Hooda, his Rajya Sabha MP son Deepender Hooda and their confidante Udai Bhan, who replaced Selja as Haryana Congress chief in April 2022.

Images of the party’s state in-charge Deepak Babaria and the central leadership of Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and his predecessors, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, also feature on the posters.

Team SRK

The absence of Selja, Surjewala and Choudhry – all prominent leaders of the party in Haryana – on the campaign’s publicity material is hard to ignore. More so, since both Babaria and Bhan maintain that Ghar, Ghar Congress is an “official campaign” of the party under which “all Congress leaders will tour across Haryana and visit as many households as possible to inform and interact with people about the party’s political vision”.

Team SRK, which believes that the slight is “deliberate”, has responded in kind by shunning the Ghar, Ghar Congress campaign. Given the acrimony between the two camps, it isn’t surprising that posters of the Congress Sandesh Yatra feature neither the Hooda father-son duo nor state party chief Bhan. Even Babaria, the AICC in-charge of Haryana, is missing from the posters, which prominently feature Selja, Surjewala and Choudhry along with Kharge and Rahul.

Confusion confounded

The confusion that the two campaigns have plunged the party cadre into is palpable.

“The state in-charge says Ghar, Ghar Congress is the official campaign and he has pointedly told party members to make it a success and not participate in any other campaign or yatra. In an election year, the ordinary worker, aspirants for a Lok Sabha ticket or an assembly ticket, cannot afford to keep distance from one campaign and participate in the other,” a former Congress MLA and Haryana Congress office bearer told The Federal.

Another state party functionary said: “Everyone knows Hooda is our tallest mass leader and the PCC chief is his man, so you can’t skip Ghar, Ghar Congress but then, you can’t ignore SRK also because Selja is close to Sonia Gandhi, Surjewala is part of Rahul’s coterie and both of them are also CWC members while for those from Bhiwani-Mahendragarh, Choudhry is a leader you can’t ignore.”

Indispensable Hooda

The rivalry between Hooda and Team SRK is common knowledge in the Haryana Congress. Though a satrap with strong influence over the state’s formidable Jat votes, Hooda is known for his refusal to cooperate with any colleague he sees as potential competition, either to him or to his son.

However, what makes Hooda politically indispensable for the Congress high command despite his proclivity for perpetuating factionalism and, at times, even turning a rebel – he was part of the party’s now defunct G23 and, per those in Team SRK, bullied the leadership into replacing Selja with Bhan – is his unparalleled ability to mobilise both public and resources for the Congress in Haryana.

Hoodas’ popularity

The Ghar, Ghar Congress campaign, said a leader close to Hooda, is evidence of the clout and popularity of the Jat strongman from Rohtak.

“Wherever the Hoodas visit in Haryana, there is spontaneous outpouring of support from the public. Today, people see Deepender Hooda as their future leader. Selja, Surjewala and Choudhry may have influence in some areas but they are not mass leaders... Choudhry manages to win from Tosham because she is Bansi Lal’s daughter-in-law but she couldn’t get her daughter (former MP Shruti Choudhry) elected from Bhiwani in two consecutive Lok Sabha polls; Selja and Surjewala can’t even win their own election but are relevant in the party only because they flaunt their proximity to the Gandhi family,” the Hooda aide said.

Selja’s views

Congress sources told The Federal that the two simultaneous campaigns have not just confused the party cadre but also left the central leadership flummoxed. Despite Babaria repeatedly asserting that the Ghar, Ghar Congress campaign is the only outreach program “sanctioned” by the high command for Haryana, Team SRK has refused to halt its yatra.

Instead, Selja has pitched the Congress Sandesh Yatra as an extension of Rahul’s BJNY, which unlike its previous version, the Bharat Jodo Yatra, will not be traversing through Haryana.

Rahul yatra

“My responsibility is to the people of Haryana and to the Congress party. The Congress Sandesh Yatra is meant to spread the message of the BJNY across Haryana and to strengthen the party before the Lok Sabha elections; in the two days that we have been on the yatra, we have received tremendous response... people of Haryana want to see the Congress in government and that is what we are committed towards; I don’t see any reason why anyone in the party should have a problem with this,” Selja told The Federal.

The former Union minister refused to comment on Babaria’s missive to party members to “not participate” in any other campaign that runs parallel to the Ghar, Ghar Congress campaign saying she had “not received any such instruction”.

Combative Kiran

Choudhry, more combative than the mild-mannered Selja, however, lived up to her reputation of being a Hooda-critic. Acknowledging that Congress Sandesh Yatra posters do not feature the two Hoodas nor the PCC chief and Babaria, Choudhry said: “All three of us (she, Selja and Surjewala) have been committed soldiers of the Congress but do you see our photos on the Ghar, Ghar Congress posters... The party cannot be held hostage by one man (read: Bhupinder Hooda) and the state in-charge has to act impartially.”

The Tosham MLA added: “I am a five-term MLA and have been a minister in the state as well as leader of opposition but if the state in-charge, the PCC chief and the LoP (Bhupinder Hooda) don’t think it important to invite me to their campaign or to involve Selja and Surjewala, who are both senior leaders holding important positions in the party, what are we supposed to do?”

Central leadership

A leader close to Team SRK rued the inability of the party’s central leadership to set the Congress’ Haryana unit in order and rein in Hooda from “running the Congress like his jagir (fief)”.

“No one is denying that Hooda is an important and influential leader but look at how he has captured the party in Haryana. In the past two decades, no one who has stood up to his bullying has been able to work peacefully in the party. Ashok Tanwar (former Sirsa MP and ex-Haryana PCC chief) quit the party because of Hooda, Kuldeep Bishnoi (former multiple-term MP and MLA) also left because of Hooda. But instead of holding Hooda accountable, the central leadership surrendered the party to him in the state; now his man is the PCC president and he is the LoP and the state in-charge also listens only to him. This is not how a party should function,” this leader said.

Hooda defends stance

Deepender Hooda rubbished all such criticism of his father running roughshod over other party leaders.

“I don’t wish to comment on what any individual has said,” Deepender told The Federal, adding that the Ghar, Ghar Congress campaign is “a collective outreach programme of the party and all our leaders have been asked to make it a success so that the Congress returns to power both at the Centre and in Haryana... anyone who has the party’s interest in their heart will participate in it but if someone can’t look beyond their personal interests, what can we do.”