The Haryna Congress — a divided house of dissenting leaders — is creating a new record in the state by contesting the fourth major general elections without any executive in place for over 10 years.
This comes with another record of contesting two rounds of civic polls for the posts of mayor on party tickets. The Congress has two facations — one headed by former chief minister Bhupinder Hooda and HPCC president Udai Bhan and the other (SRB group) comprising Kumari Selja, Randeep Singh Surjewala, and Birender Singh.Hoping against hope, AICC general secretary and incharge of Haryana affairs Deepak Babaria is optimistic about having the executive in place in the “near future”. “This is our in-house arrangement. We are in the process of finalising the list,” Babaria said.
The party has already entered the poll fray and the dissenting leaders are busy lobbying for their loyalists to be picked as party’s candidates.
The party’s last executive body was between 2007 and 2014 when Hooda was CM and his loyalist and dalit face Phool Chand Mullana was HPCC president. During Mullana’s term, the party could have an executive, which was dissolved after Ashok Tanwar, who is now in the BJP, was made HPCC president. Then began the competition between Hooda group and Tanwar. Tanwar could run the show with two working presidents and a treasurer. Hooda group managed to get Tanwar’s lists of the executive bodies halted and it could not be made even after Tanwar quit the party.
Then former Union minister Selja who took over the HPCC days ahead of 2019 assembly elections. She too worked overnight to put the state executive in place but could not complete the task due to influence of the Hooda group.
Ultimately, in May 2022, Udai Bhan took over the HPCC and even after more than two years, he has not been able to finalise the list of the executive.
This time, it’s a joint fight — put up by Selja, Surjewala and Birender — which has brought the process of releasing the list prepared by Hooda and Udai Bhan to a halt. Sensing trouble, AICC though managed to release the list of AICC invitees for the state, the list of executives is still hanging fire. Besides Udai Bhan, HPCC has three working presidents and one treasurer for office-bearers, so there were unruly scenes when observers went to the assembly seats last year for surveys to search for the candidates . “Had the executive been in place, the party would not have been struggling in finalising things like candidates and other committees,” a former district president of Panchkula said.
“Now, it’s the electorate force, which is helping this party to excel. Had it been dependent on infrastructure, this party would have shown its worst performance,” he added.
