Since his proposal at an event in Rohtak earlier this month for a four Deputy Chief Ministers “formula” if the Congress is voted to power in next year’s Haryana Assembly poll, senior party leader and former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda has faced heat from both his colleagues and rivals.
While Chief Minister Manohar Lal accused Mr. Hooda of resorting to “brazen caste politics” and of “disrobing democracy”, senior Congress leaders in the State denied any such plan in the works.
During the event on October 12, Mr. Hooda had referred to a plan he claimed to have devised ahead of the 2019 Assembly election, that of four Deputy CMs — a Brahmin, a Scheduled Caste (SC), a woman, and an Other Backward Class (OBC) person.
Party colleagues hit out
Some Congress leaders said it may have been the two-time former CM’s attempt at reaching out to these four segments and cementing the Chief Ministerial post for the Jat community, to which he belongs. It alienates other communities such as Baniyas, Punajbis, Rajputs, and Muslims and could do more harm than good to the party’s prospects in the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections next year, they added.
Two days after Mr. Hooda’s proposal, Haryana Pradesh Congress Committee chief Udai Bhan at a press conference had said the decision to appoint a Chief Minister and a Deputy Chief Minister lay with the party’s central leadership. “There is a democratic process. The high command, after consulting the MLAs, decides on the names. If the high command wants and a need is felt, there can also be a Deputy CM, and they can be from any community,” he had said.
Congress Working Committee member Kumari Selja also countered Mr. Hooda’s claim and said there was no such “formula” mooted in 2019 when she headed the State Congress. She said the party’s central leadership had not authorised anyone to make such announcements.
In a letter to Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, former Haryana Home Minister Subhash Batra, a Punjabi, had strongly objected to the “formula” and said it was against the party’s ideology of taking along all castes and religions.
Contenders for CM post
Some sources said Mr. Hooda’s announcement might have been an attempt to nip any competition for the Chief Minister’s chair in 2024 in the bud, in the light of several contenders for the post.
This includes Ms. Selja, a prominent Dalit leader close to the central leadership. She had lost the Chief Ministerial race during the 2009 Assembly election after Mr. Hooda cobbled together the numbers to help Congress cross the simple majority mark in the 90-member Haryana Assembly.
Rajya Sabha member Randeep Surjewala, another prominent Jat leader, may also be in contention after he led the Congress to victory in the Karnataka election earlier this year as the party’s campaign in-charge.
After the chorus of disagreement, Mr. Hooda later said that a Jat, if not made the CM, would be a Deputy CM. The party hopes to consolidate its hold on the community with growing disaffection about the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party not giving it adequate representation, a feeling heightened by the replacement of State party chief Om Prakash Dhankar with Kurukshetra MP and OBC leader Nayab Saini on Friday.
