Rahul Gandhi's recent push for an alliance between the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Haryana has not gone down well with the grand old party's state leadership. The state Congress faction led by former Haryana CM and Congress veteran Bhupinder Singh Hooda is particularly disenchanted about the proposal.
Hooda is especially upset about the Congress-AAP alliance as the seats that the Arvind Kejriwal-led national party is seeking include those from where he has his nominees. These seats include Jind, Pehowa and Kalayat, The Indian Express reported citing sources.
The Hooda camp is not only upset over the proposed Congress-AAP seat sharing. Leaders of the Hooda camp are also reportedly angsty about the All India Congress Committee (AICC) leadership's decision to deny tickets to some of the sitting MLAs.
At present, the grand old party has 28 MLAs in the Haryana legislative assembly.
Congress' Central Election Committee (CEC) reportedly cleared the tickets of a majority of Haryana's sitting MLAs for the state elections but some of these names have now been put on hold. MLAs whose names have been put on hold include Rao Dan Singh from Mahendragarh, Surender Pawar from Sonipat and Dharam Singh Chhoker from Samalkha, as per The Indian Express report.
The central leadership's reconsideration of names led to a delay in the party's list of candidates being released despite the CEC clearing nearly 66 names earlier this week. Despite Hooda faction's upset, the Congress has set up a sub-committee to explore a seat-sharing pact with the AAP.
The sub-committee, which includes ;leaders like Kumari Selja and Deepender Singh Hooda, has also been tasked with deciding candidates in about 24 seats where there is no internal consensus. Despite the upset among senior Haryana leaders, Rahul Gandhi wants the seat-sharing pact with the AAP to materialise so that a message of unity in the INDIA bloc is sent, sources added.
Not only the Hooda camp, other senior Haryana Congress leaders such as the state party Udai Bhan are also not very gung-ho about the Congress-AAP alliance. Partap Singh Bajwa, CLP leader in the AAP-ruled Punjab, also urged the Congress high command to stay as far as possible from the AAP in Haryana.
Meanwhile, AICC general secretary in-charge of Haryana Deepak Babaria said that a decision will soon be taken on the seat-sharing arrangement with AAP. Even though he did not tell about the exact number of seats to be shared with the AAP, Babaria said the number of seats shared will be in single digits.
The AAP is asking for 10 seats but the Congress is not interested in giving the party more than 4-5 seats.