The Congress high command appears to have yielded to the abnormal pressure mounted by dissident leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda by accepting his demand to hand over the reins of the Haryana unit to him instead of creating a new leadership.
On Wednesday, Sonia Gandhi sprang a surprise by appointing former MLA Udai Bhan as the state unit chief while retaining Hooda as the Congress Legislature Party leader and naming four working presidents.
Bhan, a Dalit, is a known Hooda loyalist. Bhan’s predecessor, Kumari Selja, also a Dalit, was a fierce Hooda critic and wanted to ensure the Congress returned to the traditional rainbow politics by ending Jat dominance.
But the Congress, keen to keep Hooda in its fold, chose to avoid a confrontation at this stage.
While the dominant view in the party was that Kuldeep Bishnoi should have been promoted to offer a fresh deal to the state, Hooda was keen on holding sway over both the Congress Legislature Party (CLP) and the Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC).
Even after the appointment, a leader told The Telegraph: “We haven’t gone for the best option. The Hooda-Bishnoi combination was definitely better. If Hooda didn’t want to relinquish the CLP post, Bishnoi should have been given charge of the state. Bishnoi is a leader in his own right while Bhan will play Hooda’s game.”
The choice of working presidents demonstrated a tough balancing act to keep all the factions together. While Shruti Choudhary was picked to keep the former CLP leader happy, Ram Kishan Gujjar comes from the camp of Kumari Selja. Randeep Surjewala, too, succeeded in creating a space for his loyalist Suresh Gupta while Jitender Bharadwaj was chosen as the representative of Brahmins.
In poll-bound Himachal too, the Congress played safe by relying on the legacy of former chief minister Virbhadra Singh by making his widow Pratibha Singh the state unit chief. There is anyway no natural claimant for the replacement of the towering Virbhadra, who passed away last year, and the party intends to tap into the goodwill his family commands. Pratibha Singh is a Lok Sabha member from Mandi.
Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu has been made campaign committee chief and Mukesh Agnihotri the leader of the legislature party. Senior leader Anand Sharma, who spent his life in the high command structure instead of focusing on state politics, has been made the chairman of the steering committee for the Assembly elections. Sharma is one of the architects of the G-23 rebel group.
