Deepender Hooda in a Haryana Congress advertisement. Image/News18
Sources say Kumari Selja has conveyed that it’s unfair for the campaign to be seemingly promoting only one family, while those in the campaign committee and strategist Sunil Kanugolu’s team confirmed to News18 that they have reached out to others as well and that no one leader is being projected
A series of campaigns by the Congress for the upcoming Haryana assembly polls has got the party’s leaders in the state divided and up in arms. While it’s a known fact that Kumari Selja has never been comfortable with the working style and dominance of the Hoodas, this exercise has upset many including her.
The advertisements merely outline the policies and campaigns of the Congress for the Haryana polls with the tagline “Haryana maange hisaab (Haryana seeks reckoning)”, a strategy that has worked for the party in other state polls as similar electioneering was done in Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh, and Telangana. But the campaigns for Haryana showed Deepender Hooda interacting with locals and sharing a meal with them.
Sources say that the organisers did reach out to others like Kumari Selja but so far she has preferred to go on her own. Around the end of July, she will begin her yatra across the state, similar to the one she had done in January.
Speaking to News18, Selja said, “I have always spoken against this monopoly of the Hoodas. This will only end up hurting the party. We all should be working together and must be given importance.”
Sources say Selja has conveyed that it’s unfair for the campaign to be seemingly promoting only one family.
In the last state polls, the infighting had cost the Congress as it fell short of numbers to form the government, and the Bharatiya Janata Party swiftly stitched up an alliance with Dushyant Chautala’s Jannayak Janata Party. Selja and her supporters were angry when she was replaced by Hooda’s close aide Uday Bhan as state unit chief. The party tried a balancing act but it did not work.
The Congress’s top leadership wants to take no chances as it knows the Hoodas hold sway in the state. But at the same time, to avoid the infighting that the party saw in Karnataka and Himachal Pradesh before polls, the Congress wants to ensure that everyone is on the same page as Haryana seems like a winnable state.
Sources in the campaign committee and strategist Sunil Kanugolu’s team confirmed to News18 that they have reached out to others as well and that no one leader is being projected. It’s a state the party can ill afford to lose. Certainly not to infighting.
