Chandigarh, Oct 8 (PTI) A four-time MP, six-time MLA and the man who could have been three-time chief minister of a state that has been the arbiter of his political destiny. The calculations went awry though and Haryana didn’t vote the way Congress veteran Bhupinder Singh Hooda had anticipated.
The doughty politician, who fought the opposition and some say even forces within the party to stake claim to primacy in the Congress, turned 77 last month. But there seems to be enough fight still left.
With trends showing the BJP set to return to power for a third consecutive term in his home state with its largest ever tally and the Congress settling at the 37 mark (winning or leading) in the 90-member assembly, defeat was writ large.
Not for Hooda though.
The man who was handpicked by the Congress in 2005 to be chief minister, edging out party veteran Bhajan Lal, is quite the never say die man.
“The Congress will get a majority. Congress will form government in Haryana,” the Congress leader and chief minister from 2005 to 2014 told reporters in Rohtak in the morning.
“The credit will go to Rahul Gandhi ji, Mallikarjun Kharge ji, Priyanka Gandhi ji, and other leaders,” he said, adding that the real credit goes to the people of Haryana.
In an election where several of his party colleagues lost or were trailing — with even star wrestler turned politician Vinesh Phogat winning her seat Julana by a little over 6,000 votes — Hooda held firmly on to power in his constituency Garhi-Samla Kiloi by bagging it again with a massive margin of 71,465 votes.
That win is his and so perhaps is his party’s debacle.
Although the Congress had earlier made it clear its MLAs and the high command will decide who will be the chief minister if the party wins the elections, the Jat stalwart was virtually the face of the Congress in the assembly polls.
The Congress contested 89 of the 90 Assembly seats — except Bhiwani which it left for the CPI(M) — and the tickets for most went to Hooda loyalists or those considered close to him. Besides, the party re-fielded all 28 sitting MLAs, most of whom owe allegiance to Hooda.
Senior Congress leader Kumari Selja did not contest the elections but her aspiration to be at the helm of the state was no secret.
On his part, Hooda maintained all along that there is a laid down procedure in the party, according to which “the opinion of the MLAs will be sought and the high command will decide (who will be the CM if party wins)”.
In the Lok Sabha polls too, his choice prevailed in eight of the nine seats the Congress fought — barring the Sirsa seat contested and won by Selja. It won five seats while its INDIA bloc ally AAP unsuccessfully fought the Kurukshetra seat.
In the assembly polls, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) fought solo after talks with the Congress to stitch an alliance did not materialise. It was believed that Hooda was opposed to any tie-up with the Arvind Kejriwal-led party for the assembly polls.
The two-time former chief minister and is now a six-time MLA now has also been four-time MP from Rohtak. He defeated former deputy prime minister Devi Lal from the parliamentary seat in the 1990s.
Hooda, who started his political career at Youth Congress, was born in village Sanghi on September 15, 1947 in Rohtak district.
Hooda studied both in Panjab University, Chandigarh and Delhi University. He is a law graduate. In 2010, then prime minister Manmohan Singh constituted the Working Group on Agriculture Production under his chairmanship to recommend strategies and action.
His father late Chaudhary Ranbir Singh Hooda was a renowned freedom fighter.
Bhupinder Hooda married Asha Dahiya in 1976 and has two children Deepender and Anjali.
After the Congress party lost power in Haryana in the 2014 polls, nothing went right for the satrap.
The ruling BJP at the Centre made allegations of irregularities in land deals, a major poll issue last time. Cases were slapped against the Congress veteran.
After riding to power with an overwhelming majority in the 2005 assembly polls winning 67 seats, the party’s tally dropped to 40 in 2009 though it managed to form the government with support of independents and some others. In 2014, Congress secured only 15 seats, though in 2019 it improved its performance and got 31 seats.
It has bettered that, but not convincingly enough.
In its sweeping Lok Sabha victory in 2019 in which it won all the 10 Haryana seats, the ruling BJP had breached even the traditional bastions of its opponents. Both Hooda, who fought from Sonipat, and his son and three-time MP Deepender Hooda, who contested from Rohtak, lost.
The BJP has alleged that Hooda reduced the Haryana Congress to a “bapu-beta” party. Hooda senior has also been at loggerheads with then Haryana Congress state unit chief Ashok Tanwar, who quit Congress in 2019 before returning to the Congress fold after leaving BJP last week. Hooda welcomed him back in the presence of Rahul Gandhi at a poll rally.
The BJP’s leadership also targeted Hooda over alleged corruption, favouritism in jobs and over various scams during his regime, but he remained unfazed and on the last day of poll campaigning threw a challenge to the saffron outfit.
Launching a counter-offensive after the BJP alleged that the Congress during its rule in Haryana gave land of farmers at peanuts to their ‘damad’, Hooda had said if the saffron party showed proof that even a single inch of government land was given to Robert Vadra, he would quit politics.
During campaigning, Hooda maintained that farmers’ plight, Agnipath, unemployment, law and order, and inflation were key issues which the ruling BJP failed to address and ruling dispensation proved to be a total failure.
Will Hooda rise again from the ashes of this defeat? As the state readies to welcome another BJP government, that is a question many are asking. PTI SUN VSD MIN MIN
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