"The organisational structure of the state Congress needs an urgent revamp," Hooda said.

(This story originally appeared in on Aug 2, 2018)

Amid hectic positioning in the faction-ridden Haryana Congress, former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda has said that there was a need for a new leadership in the state PCC. “Congress members in Haryana are awaiting party president Rahulji to announce a new leadership for the state Congress,” Hooda told ET on Wednesday.

When pointed out that Ashok Tanwar, whom the Hooda camp is opposed to, was PCC president, he said, “during the Congress organisational elections, senior leaders of the Haryana Congress authorised Rahulji to appoint a new PCC chief. This authorisation, naturally, means the Congress president will appoint a new party chief.”

There is buzz in Congress circles that Hooda is keen on heading the Haryana Congress ahead of the assembly elections scheduled next year. When asked about this he said: “When I became the CM, I was neither PCC nor CLP chief but a party MP. Given the BJP state government’s all-ro-und failure, the state Congress needs a leadership that can energise party workers and refurbish its organisational structure to defeat the BJP in the elections.”

Talking of the current Haryana Congress, he said “the organisational structure of the state Congress needs an urgent revamp. Currently, there are not even district and block Congress committees.” When asked if he expressed his reservations to the party high command when it was about to appoint senior leader Kumari Selja as PCC chief, Hooda said, “Kumari Seljaji is a senior leader of the party. I have a long association with her. She understands state politics. I get along well with all my party colleagues.”

On the lingering buzz that he was under pressure due to central agencies’ investigations and could quit the Congress, Hooda said “these are motivated and baseless talks. I am a committed Congress man. My grandfather and father were freedom fighters and if the British could not pressure my family, do you think anybody else can pressure me? All the cases and investigations against me are part of political vendetta. I will prove my innocence in the court of justice.”

When asked if his ongoing Jan Kranti Yatra across Haryana was part of his positioning for the leadership slot ahead of polls, Hooda said it was only designed to expose “allround failures of the BJP stage government and remind the people about the good work” his earlier two governments had done.

“The BJP state government has proved to be an all-round failure. I have been meeting farmers, traders, socially and economically backwards sections, women and youth. All of them told me the state government has made life extremely difficult. Farmers are in deep crisis and in debt, unemployment is growing among youth. The state government has failed to carry forward many welfare schemes my government had initiated for farmers, Dalits, youth and women and abandoned many of them. When we left office, Haryana topped in per capita income and per capita investment. The state has declined on both fronts. All that the Khattar government is doing is shallow event-management shows,” he alleged.

