Talks on amid change of guard in Hry Cong, Hooda frontrunner

Chandigarh: Hectic activities have begun in Haryana Congress amid reports that State Congress Chief Kumari Selja has offered to resign and the party's top leadership is now looking for a new president.

Meetings of senior Congress leaders from the State with Central leaders of the party in the past couple of days have only added the proverbial fuel to the fire so far as speculation over the change of guard in the state is concerned.

Former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda's meeting with senior party leader KC Venugopal and Adampur MLA Kuldeep Bishnoi's meeting with Sonia Gandhi is being seen in this context.

Hooda, however, said that it was common for political leaders to meet their central leadership and nothing more should be read into it.

Millennium Post, has, however, learnt that a change of guards in the State Congress is imminent and this could happen any moment now.

Sources said that though several names were being discussed in the political circles, Hooda, who enjoys a firm grip over the party workers across the state is the frontrunner for the post.

"The party leadership is likely to name either Hooda himself or any of his confidants as the new party president," said the sources.

Presently, the leader of the Congress Legislature Party, Hooda enjoys the status of Leader of Opposition in the State Assembly.

Sources said that in case Hooda is asked to head the party in the state, a leader of his choice could be appointed CLP leader.

It is in this context that Bishnoi's meeting with Sonia Gandhi assumed significance.

Kumari Selja, herself a senior party leader and a former Union Minister, was appointed State Congress Chief in September 2019 after the party's complete washout in Haryana in May 2019 parliamentary polls and just a month ahead of assembly elections in the state.

She replaced Ashok Tanwar, another Dalit leader like Kumari Selja, who had been given the reins of the party ahead of 2014 polls.

However, Kumari Selja never had a good equation with Bhupinder Singh Hooda so much so that fissures within the party were quite wide to be seen with the naked eye.

Only in March this year, Rahul Gandhi met various Congress leaders from the party in a bid to bring about a semblance of rapprochement between them, but it did not seem to work.

Both Hooda and Selja called separate meetings over the Chandigarh issue after the Punjab CM got a resolution passed in the Assembly demanding immediate transfer of the City to his state.