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Sonia to intervene to bring peace in Cong state units

Congress general secretary Shakeel Ahmed (L) and Haryana Congress chief Ashok Tanwar in Chandigarh on Monday. Tribune Photo: Manoj Mahajan

Geetanjali Gayatri

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, May 25

Frequent public spats between the warring factions of Punjab and Haryana Congress have reached Congress president Sonia Gandhi who could step in to iron out the differences among the leaders.

Sources said that Shakeel Ahmed, general secretary in charge of Punjab and Haryana, has written to the Congress chief about the tussle between Punjab PCC president Pratap Singh Bajwa and and Deputy Leader of the Congress in Lok Sabha Amarinder Singh in Punjab and the tug of war between PCC chief Ashok Tanwar and former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda in Haryana.

It is learnt that Ahmed has sought her intervention in bringing the leaders together for table talks to resolve the “bickering” since it is not doing any good to the party image the Congress high command is trying to build in view of the aggressive posturing against the Modi government and the BJP-led and BJP-supported governments in Haryana and Punjab, respectively.

Sources said the Congress chief was being kept in the loop about the day-to-day run-ins in the two camps. Since all attempts to broker peace between the leaders by the seniors in the party have failed, Sonia Gandhi has been urged to bring them together and warn them against washing dirty linen in public. While Captain refuses to accept Bajwa’s leadership in Punjab, Tanwar has repeatedly “countered” Hooda as far as the state politics goes. That they don’t see eye-to-eye on most matters is an open secret.

If Hooda announced that pink pagris would be Haryana’s “distinguishable” feature at a recent farmers’ rally of the Congress in Delhi, Tanwar announced that the Congressmen would wear caps bearing the tri-colour.

When Hooda announced a “jan jagran abhiyan” from May 31 from Kandela to expose the state government’s failures, Tanwar said that it was not a party function and followed it up by announcing a similar public-contact programme from May 29 to highlight the inadequacies of the BJP government in the state and the unfulfilled promises of the Centre.