Days after former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda met Ghulam Nabi Azad, who resigned from the party, Congress Working Committee (CWC) member Kumari Selja has written a letter to Haryana party in-charge Vivek Bansal demanding that a show cause notice should be issued to him.
Selja, a former Rajya Sabha MP and also former state in-chief, wrote a letter to Bansal after Hooda, along with veteran leader Anand Sharma, former Maharashtra CM Prithviraj Chavan, met Azad at his residence on Tuesday. Azad quit the Congress last Friday and sent his five-page resignation to Congress interim chief Sonia Gandhi.
A Congress source said that in her letter to Bansal, Selja said that a show cause notice should be issued to Hooda and an explanation sought about the meeting.
In her letter to Bansal, the Congress leader also alleged that Azad, after resigning from the primary membership of the party, has been attacking the Congress leadership, the source said.
Speaking to The New Indian, Bansal said, “I have received a letter from Kumari Selja and I will forward it to the party high command. And whatever action they deem fit will be taken.”
Hooda and Selja have been at loggerheads for years. Earlier this year, Selja was removed as Haryana Congress chief and Hooda’s close aide Uday Bhan made the new state unit chief. In the past, when the internal rift in Haryana Congress unit had come out in the open, former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi had held meetings with Hooda, his son Deepender Hooda and Selja at his residence. The friction also cost the party a Rajya Sabha seat to former Union minister and Congress candidate Ajay Maken earlier this year.
Senior leaders like Randeep Surjewala, Kiran Choudhry, and Kuldeep Bishnoi were against the move to appoint Hooda or his son as the new state unit chief. After the defeat of Maken in the Rajya Sabha polls, Bishnoi too left the party.
Before the 2019 elections, the Hooda camp had managed to push out former state Congress chief Ashok Tanwar, who eventually quit the party.
On August 26, in a major blow to Congress, veteran party leader and member of the G23 group, Azad, resigned from all posts in the party. He also accused the “new coterie of inexperienced sycophants” of starting to run the affairs of the grand old party. He also said that former party chief Rahul Gandhi’s childish behaviour of tearing the ordinance copy contributed significantly to the defeat of the UPA government in 2014. On Monday, Azad broke his silence and once again targeted the party saying he was forced to leave the party.
Azad said, “I have been forced to leave my home. When the family members do not want a man and the person starts to feel that he is now being considered as an outsider, then the person leaves the house.”
Azad will be addressing a public meeting in Jammu and Kashmir on September 4, which collides with the Congress’ ‘Mehangai Pe Halla Bol’ rally in Delhi.