Cong sub-committee meets CWC members, sitting MPs for feedback

The Congress sub-committee formed to assess the most challenging seats among the 90 Assembly segments of Haryana on Thursday met sitting MPs and working committee members from the state to take their feedback on the poll strategy and potential candidates.

The committee comprising AICC general secretary Madhusudan Mistry, former Chhattisgarh Health Minister TS Singhdeo and AICC general secretary for Haryana Deepak Babaria held its first meeting and sought the views of CWC members from Haryana — Kumari Selja and Randeep Singh Surjewala (who are also MPs) and four other sitting MPs — Jai Prakash, Satpal Brahmachari, Deepender Singh Hooda and Varun Choudhry. The sub-panel also met Congress OBC Cell chief Capt Ajay Yadav.

The Tribune has learnt that the meeting, which lasted for nearly six hours, took detailed feedback on probable candidates for the remaining challenging seats from senior leaders. A source said, “The mandate of the sub-committee is to finalise single names for each seat. First, the direction was to submit these names to the Congress president but now it has been decided to submit these names to the Central Election Committee (CEC), which will take the final call.” It added that the sub-committee had co-opted Haryana CLP leader Bhupinder Hooda and state party chief Udai Bhan, who attended the meeting.

The CEC will meet at 5.50 pm on Friday to take the final call on the candidates for the October 5 elections. Asked if the sub-committee had left any seats for AAP in case a pre-poll alliance works out for Haryana, a senior leader said, “The alliance talks are underway at the level of AICC general secretary KC Venugopal. The party will keep candidates for all 90 seats ready, as we did in the case of Jammu and Kashmir. If and when the alliance works out, seats can be decided later also.”

Sources in the sub-committee said that the meeting ended in a broad agreement on who the candidates should be for the most challenging seats where several people owing allegiance to different factions had laid claims.

The sub-committee will meet again on Friday morning to finalise single panel names for the pending segments. After that, the CEC will meet to take the final call on candidates.

AICC sources, however, said Hooda, Selja and Surjewala were all “surprisingly cooperative”.