Haryana Congress in turmoil as leadership rift stalls key appointments

Besieged by successive Assembly poll losses after a fleeting uptick in its electoral fortunes in last year’s Lok Sabha polls, the Congress had pledged in December to dedicate 2025 for rejuvenating its atrophying organisation. Two months on, the Congress high command in Delhi need only look at the party’s state of affairs in neighbouring Haryana for a reality check of its plans going awry.

Having suffered an “unexpected” defeat in last October’s Haryana Assembly elections — the party’s third consecutive poll loss in the state since 2014 — the Congress is still struggling to stem its factional feuds, giving the BJP a free pass. Five months since the poll drubbing, the party high command has been unable to both, name a Congress Legislative Party (CLP) chief and rejig the Haryana Congress unit.

Opposition void

On March 7, as the Haryana Assembly convened for its budget session, the absence of a Leader of Opposition would have brought added cheer to the ruling BJP’s Nayab Singh Saini-led dispensation. This is the third sitting of the 90-member Haryana Assembly, following the inaugural and winter sessions, since the BJP, largely tipped to lose last October’s polls, scripted a stunning 48-seat victory against the Congress, which was consigned to the Opposition benches with 37 MLAs.

Also Read: Why did Haryana exit polls go wrong? Yashwant Deshmukh of C-Voter explains | Off The Beaten Track

Yet, the Congress appears nowhere closer to naming its CLP chief than it was five months earlier when senior leaders Ashok Gehlot, Partap Singh Bajwa and Ajay Maken sought views of the newly elected MLAs on the matter and submitted their report to the high command.

Leadership uncertainty

For two consecutive days before the start of the budget session, leaders of the Haryana Congress impressed upon the party high command to clear the appointment of the CLP chief, who would also serve as the LoP. On March 5, the party’s newly appointed Haryana in-charge BK Hariprasad met senior Haryana Congress leaders to discuss contenders for the CLP chief’s post, among other party-related issues.

Sources told The Federal that several leaders pointed out during the meeting that the absence of a LoP had left the party hamstrung in the Assembly with no clarity on who would lead the Congress’s charge against the Saini government and on the issues that the party should raise on the floor of the House. The following day, at a meeting called in Chandigarh by Haryana Congress chief Udai Bhan, state unit leaders reiterated the same concerns.

Hariprasad, it is learnt, had indicated to his Haryana Congress colleagues that the CLP chief would be appointed “before the budget session starts” — a ‘deadline’ that whizzed past without any sign of the much-awaited announcement.

Also Read: Why did Haryana exit polls go wrong? Yashwant Deshmukh of C-Voter explains | Off The Beaten Track

Turf war

What’s delaying the appointment isn’t an abundance of options before the high command but an abundance of the usual acrimony between former CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda and his intra-party rivals, Kumari Selja, Randeep Singh Surjewala and Capt. Ajay Singh Yadav. Sources said nearly 30 of the party’s 37 MLAs are backing Hooda, under whose stewardship the Congress has now lost three state elections in a row; a proposition Selja, Surjewala and Yadav stridently oppose. This bitter turf war, sources said, trumped other factors — key among them being the balance of caste equations — that the high command will need to equally weigh in while picking the CLP chief as the appointment is also expected to coincide with or precede a change of guard in the PCC.

Hooda, who served as the LoP in the last Assembly too while his loyalist Udai Bhan led the state Congress, is keen to continue as the CLP chief. Sources close to the Jat strongman from Rohtak assert that not only is he “the only leader who can counter the BJP effectively” in the Assembly but also that he commands the loyalty of a majority of MLAs and would have “led the party to victory if people like Selja and Surjewala had not damaged the party in the election by regularly making damaging statements during the campaign”.

On the other hand, the anti-Hooda camp, a senior party leader told The Federal, has been trying to prevail upon the high command to “free the party” from Hooda’s grip; arguing that the former CM “does not believe in taking everyone along” and that he, along with Bhan, had “misled the central leadership at every step” during last year’s Assembly polls on issues ranging from candidate selection to the narrative that the party went into the campaign with.

Also Read: Will Mani Shankar Aiyar mentor Rahul? Here's what he said

Bitter infighting

Selja, who had kept away from the party’s poll campaign for a considerable amount of time due to her running feud with Hooda, believes that the party should have by now “acted against those who were responsible for our defeat”. Without naming Hooda directly, the Congress’s Sirsa MP and most prominent Dalit leader from the state, told The Federal, “the election was ours to win but we lost because some leaders put their interests before those of the party and the same leaders are not just holding on to their posts still but also holding the party to ransom; a strong message needs to be sent and when these appointments (CLP chief and the new Haryana Congress chief) are made, those who were responsible for the defeat should be held to account.”

Yadav, who had briefly quit from the party after the results only to then withdraw his resignation, was more direct. “The CLP chief and the PCC chief are the most important positions in the party’s state unit; should these posts go to people who have damaged the party at every step only to keep prove their dominance... whenever the party loses the elections in any state, the first people to take responsibility for the defeat or to be relieved of their charge are those who led the campaign and in Haryana everyone knows Hooda and Bhan were in that position; so why should they continue now instead of making way for new leadership,” Yadav told The Federal.

Dilemma before high command

The dilemma before the Congress high command is whether it would be politically prudent to entirely ignore Hooda, a leader many believe could split the party in Haryana if denied his way, merely to assert itself and appoint an MLA from the rival camp, none of whom command majority support among the party’s legislators, or strike a compromise between the warring factions and end up looking weak.

A party leader close to the 77-year-old Hooda says the former CM could be persuaded to withdraw his claim for the CLP chief’s post if the high command anoints his son, Rohtak MP Deepender Hooda, as the new Haryana Congress chief. However, most party leaders cutting across various factions agree that such a compromise would be “unacceptable” to Selja, Surjewala and Yadav as the trio’s principal grouse is the “monopoly of the Hoodas” in running the affairs of Haryana Congress.

Also Read: Rahul Gandhi visits Dharavi leather hub workers in Mumbai

Power struggle

A party leader said the other option before the party high command is to either somehow convince Hooda to leave the CLP chief’s post for an MLA close to Selja with the assurance that Deepender will be given a key role in Haryana Congress at a later stage or to name one of his loyalists for the post and allow someone from the rival camp to take over as the PCC chief.

Sources said if the central leadership allows the Senior Hooda to have his pick for the CLP chief, the post could go to his loyalist Geeta Bhukkal, a Dalit leader with the distinction of being the only woman MLA in the Assembly to have won five consecutive elections. In such a scenario, sources say the post of PCC chief would “most likely” go to a Jat, possibly paving the way for Surjewala, who the Hooda father and son aren’t likely to welcome even grudgingly.

However, if the high command decides to favour Hooda’s rivals in choosing the CLP leader, the likely candidate could be Panchkula MLA and former deputy CM Chander Mohan, the elder son of former CM and Bishnoi (backward caste) leader late Bhajan Lal, who enjoys Selja’s backing. The trade-off, sources said, would then require the central leadership to have Hooda get his pick for the next PCC chief.

Either way, the Congress high command can’t be assured of a smooth sailing for the party’s Haryana unit as neither Hooda nor his rivals are keen on smoking the peace pipe anytime soon; notwithstanding the cost of their rivalry that their party has to pay in its year of “sanghathan srijan” (organisation rebuilding).