ED raids on Congress MLAs vendetta against me: Haryana ex-CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda
Geetanjali Gayatri & Bhartesh Singh Thakur
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, July 22
The three Ps of polarisation, propaganda and police best define the BJP government in Haryana, and the public has already made up its mind to oust the party from power, evident in the party’s reduced vote share in the Lok Sabha result, former Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda told The Tribune in an interview today.
The people have decided on forming a Congress government in the state. The BJP has not fulfilled any of its promises be it development, law and order, employment or security. The daughters of the state, our wrestlers were humiliated at Jantar Mantar and are still to get justice.
In the inaugural episode of the newly launched video show called #DecodeHaryana, the Congress leader spoke on a wide variety of issues, ranging from Enforcement Directorate raids on Congress MLAs to “honour killings” in the state to BJP Chief Minister Nayab Saini’s policy on stilt-plus-four construction.
“The ED raids are a form of vendetta against me and my party,” Hooda said, adding, “The timing of the raids, arrest and opening of cases proves this is vendetta.” He refused to elaborate further, because the matter is sub judice.
Upbeat with the groundswell during the Congress’ on-going “Haryana Mangay Hisab” programme, Hooda maintained that the BJP government had failed on all fronts. “The people have decided on forming a Congress government in the state. The BJP has not fulfilled any of its promises, be it development, law and order, employment or security. The daughters of the state, our wrestlers, who brought back medals from the world stage were humiliated at Jantar Mantar and are still to get justice,” he said.
Hooda, widely acknowledged to be one of the sharpest political minds today across the political spectrum, fielded questions on faction-fighting within the Congress, including the absence of senior leaders like Kumari Selja and Randeep Singh Surjewala from the “Haryana Mangal Hisaab” campaign.
On Birender Singh, the senior Haryana leader who left the Congress and joined the BJP on the eve of the 2014 election and returned on the eve of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, Hooda said, with a straight face, “He is now part of the margdarshak mandal,” referring to the body of superannuated political elders created by the BJP.
As for BJP leader Kiran Chaudhury, who recently quit the Congress to join the ruling party, he said she had done so for “better prospects.”
Critical of CM Saini’s Haryana Kaushal Rozgar Nigam, the former CM said that the BJP gave out jobs on contract. “We had stopped all contractual appointments while we were in power. There is no merit, no pension, no reservation in these appointments. Consequently, two lakh regular posts are vacant. This is not employment but deployment. I strongly objected to the move of sending youth to Israel in the name of these contractual jobs,” he said.
On the BJP’s policy not to give reservation to Muslims, he added, “The Union Home Minister Amit Shah has made this statement. We were in power for 10 years before the BJP. There was no reservation. Where does the question of giving no reservation to Muslims arise? The BJP is only limited to polarisation, propaganda and police,” he said.
Taking a dig at parties who had a vote share of less than one per cent in the recently concluded Lok Sabha polls, Hooda said that the assembly election was only going to be a direct fight between the Congress and the BJP. “The vote share of the INDIA alliance stood at 47.62 per cent which is 20 per cent up over the last election. This is essentially the Congress vote share. Our vote share went up in every Lok Sabha and every Assembly segment while that of the BJP fell in every segment, though the BJP and the INDIA alliance won five seats each,” he said, clearly stating that though the Congress was in an alliance with the Aam Aadmi Party at the national level, there was no alliance between the two in the state.
He defended the Lok Sabha ticket distribution which has come under fire from the state leaders, stating that the “upsurge” of the Congress started with that. “The party high command decided on the tickets. We could have formed the government in 2019 if the ticket distribution had been right and not based on quota for the leaders,” he said.
Emphasising that killing in the name of honour was an offence and no politician, khap or village endorsed it, Hooda said he favoured a provision in the state laws to stop same gotra marriages and take into account customary practices to stop honour killings.
Asked about dynastic rule and whether he wanted Rohtak MP and his son Deepender Hooda to enter into state politics, he quipped, “I’m neither tired, nor retired.”
