It’s no secret that there’s little love lost between Congress leaders Bhupinder Singh Hooda and Kumari Selja, despite the former calling the latter his sister.
The 77-year-old Hooda, a Jat, dominates Congress affairs in Haryana, and has been a two-time chief minister of the state from 2005 to 2014, when the Narendra Modi wave swept away the Congress and installed the first Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in the state, with Manohar Lal Khattar becoming the chief minister.
While the BJP’s popularity in the state has dimmed, which prompted the central leadership to replace Khattar with Nayab Singh Saini, the Congress is also battling factionalism.
Reports suggest that Hooda, a powerful satrap, had a say in distribution of more than 75 tickets for the 90-seat Haryana assembly. Should the Congress win the assembly elections, either Hooda is likely to become the next CM, or somebody of his choice will take the reins of the state. This dominance upset Kumari Selja, a dalit, enough for her to skip the initial part of the campaigning, before she was persuaded to join the battle by Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha.
Interestingly, Kumari Selja on Thursday, October 3, met Sonia Gandhi on a day when Ashok Tanwar, who had quit the party exactly five years ago due to intense rivalry with Hooda, and flirted with Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress, Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party, and the BJP, returned to the Congress fold in Rahul Gandhi’s presence in Mahendragarh.
Like Selja, Tanwar too is a Dalit, and has been a member of Lok Sabha in the past from Haryana’s Sirsa constituency.
There is intense speculation that Bhupinder Singh Hooda would like to see his son Deepender become the next Haryana CM and solidify his base in the state, whose politics revolves around the powerful Jat community. Hooda junior is a five-time member of parliament, and is a Congress Lok Sabha member from Haryana’s Rohtak.
The powerful Hooda senior is known for his independent streak, and it would be difficult for the Congress central leadership to ignore his wishes.
At the same time, Kumari Selja, 62, is an old Gandhi family loyalist. And the fact that she’s a dalit and a woman – Haryana never had a woman chief minister – could go in her favour. Kumari Selja hogged the limelight in August 2013, when she was seen accompanying Sonia Gandhi from the Lok Sabha to AIIMS when the then Congress president took ill.
However, Kumari Selja, a Lok Sabha member from Sirsa after defeating Tanwar, who had fought on a BJP ticket, does not enjoy a wide support base, and therefore it would be difficult for her to become the state’s CM, unless the Gandhis directly intervene, and install her on the top post.
At the same time, by meeting Kumari Selja, and re-inducting Tanwar, the Congress high command may have made the going tough for the Hoodas.