Selja: Tanwar episode history, now looking to winning Haryana

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, Oct 6

The Congress is all set to fight Haryana elections on the basic issues of bread and butter with state party president Kumari Selja today saying that the upcoming Assembly poll will be different from the 2019 Lok Sabha poll and governance issues will play a key part in voter preferences.

In an interview to The Tribune today, Selja answered queries on a range of poll-related issues, including the exit of her predecessor Ashok Tanwar. She admitted that she was surprised by Tanwar’s open show of defiance outside the residence of Congress president Sonia Gandhi but was not surprised when he eventually resigned. “Yes I was surprised when he initially addressed a large gathering outside the residence of the Congress chief,” she said when asked if Tanwar’s recent rebellion caught the party unawares.

On her predecessor's allegations of sale of tickets in the candidate selection process, Selja said, “We followed the party process. The selection of candidates was a joint effort by leaders and the attempt was to find the best nominee keeping in view the overall picture. Sometimes things may not go the way people want but we must remember every leader has a special place in the party and we must respect that... but all that is history now and we are looking forward to winning Haryana by fighting the BJP together.”

Asked to comment on Tanwar’s serious allegations that Haryana Congress had become Hooda Congress, Selja said, “The Congress is an ideology. It is not the personal property of anyone. It can never be. People will come and go but the organization will stand."

She was dismissive of the dominance of the Hooda faction in the ticket distribution process in the state and said, “Concluding that is political immodesty.”

The former Union minister termed the list of Haryana Congress candidates as “representative and all inclusive” and said: “We have fielded 10 women though we should have fielded more. I ensured that out of nine Assembly segments in my Lok Sabha segment of Ambala, four women were fielded. Our list has 54 per cent candidates from the general category, 18 per cent OBCs and 17 per cent SCs. We tried to field young faces and experienced ones and all selections were based on merit. The average age of our candidates is 55 years.”

Asked when the Congress will launch its Haryana campaign, Selja said “very soon”.

Selja also said Sonia Gandhi will hold a rally in the state though she has not been active on the canvassing circuit in any of the past state elections and had held one rally in her Rae Bareli parliamentary constituency before the 2019 General Elections.

“We are working out the details of the Congress president’s programme,” Selja said, adding that the manifesto committee had submitted its report which will soon be made public. The Congress, she said, would repeat its promise of a farm loan waiver in Haryana plus a waiver for the poorest of the poor.

The Haryana Congress chief insisted that abrogation of Article 370 wasn't as dominant an election issue in Haryana as the BJP would like it to be.

NO CM CANDIDATE: SELJA

Selja said the Congress would not announce any CM candidate in Haryana and there was no such precedent in the state. “The Congress will not announce a CM candidate in the state. The Congress does not have this tradition,” she said when asked whether the party will consider fielding a CM face on the lines of Capt Amarinder Singh in Punjab and Virbhadra Singh in Himachal Pradesh. “No, we have never had that convention in Haryana. The high command will decide the CM after the elections,” she said.