Azad-Hooda meeting raises hackles in Haryana Congress

A meeting between erstwhile Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and former Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad has ruffled feathers within the party’s state unit with some leaders seeking an explanation on the interaction between the two even as the ex-CM said he always stood by the Gandhi family.

Congress Working Committee member and former union minister Kumari Selja brought up the issue of the meeting before senior party functionaries. “Such a meeting disheartens the party’s rank and file as he (Azad) quit the party after blaming the leadership and even made personal comments against our leaders,” she said. “It was no time to meet him as he has already announced the formation of a new party.”

Hooda, along with other so-called G23 rebel leaders, including Anand Sharma and former Maharashtra chief minister Prithviraj Chavan, had met Azad at his Delhi residence on Tuesday.

“Azad didn’t tell anyone before leaving the party. Earlier, our demand was that an election for the Congress president’s post should happen which was already agreed to. I met him so that bitterness between leaders is reduced,” Hooda, Haryana’s leader of opposition (LoP) in the assembly, told the media.

Selja, a bitter Hooda critic, had been removed from the post of the Haryana unit chief recently and replaced by Hooda loyalist Udai Bhan after bickering which threatened to snowball into a major controversy. Many senior leaders had threatened to quit after Bhan was made the state party chief. However, to douse the flames of rebellion some of the leaders loyal to other lobbies were accommodated.

Azad resigned from the Congress on August 26. In his resignation letter, he said that he had reached a point of no return with party president Sonia Gandhi serving as a nominal figurehead since 2019 and all decisions being taken by Rahul Gandhi or “worse still his security guards and personal assistants”.

With inputs from News18