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Journalism of Courage
Despite lobbying hard for a significant role in the Haryana Congress, senior party MLA Kuldeep Bishnoi did not land any position in the Haryana Pradesh Congress Committee (HPCC)’s revamp undertaken by the party leadership on Wednesday.
For many days, Bishnoi, the Adampur MLA, had been meeting senior Congress leaders as part of his intense lobbying exercise. On April 26, he met the All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary KC Venugupal in Delhi. He also met senior AICC leader Priyanka Gandhi on April 24. While he did not disclose their details, Bishnoi said after meeting Venugopal that he was “satisfied with the discussions that took place” and that “the meeting was positive”.
Bishnoi, the son of former chief minister Bhajan Lal, has been eyeing a key post in the Haryana Congress for a long time. Projecting himself as a non-Jat leader, he has been making attempts to emerge as a state leader rather than just being an MLA of a constituency that is considered to be his family’s pocket borough since its members have never lost any election here since 1968. Bhajan had won Adampur seat nine times and his wife Jasma Devi once, while Bishnoi have clinched it twice and his wife Renuka once.
Speaking to The Indian Express about Bishnoi’s non-inclusion in the revamped HPCC, the AICC’s Haryana in-charge Vivek Bansal said, “Definitely, he (Kuldeep) is a senior party leader. His candidature was also considered by the party high command, but certain nuances are there that the party had to take into account. Keeping all that, the decision was taken and he was not considered in the list of working presidents. Otherwise, Kuldeep Bishnoi is a member of the CWC and he shall surely be given further important assignments in the party.”
Kuldeep had first got elected as an MLA from Adampur in 1998. In the 2004 Lok Sabha polls, he defeated ex-CM Bansi Lal from Bhiwani constituency. In 2007, Bhajan and Kuldeep quit the Congress and founded the Haryana Janhit Congress (HJC) after they were ousted from the party for criticising the then CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda for “harming” farmers’ interests by promoting Special Economic Zones (SEZs) on fertile lands.
In the 2009 Assembly polls, the HJC fielded candidates on 89 out of the total 90 constituencies and won six. However, five of those six MLAS defected to the Congress in lieu of ministerial portfolios. Bishnoi moved the Punjab and Haryana High Court against the defectors and won the case as the court disqualified them as MLAs.
After Bhajan Lal’s death, Bishnoi led the HJC and also forged an alliance with the BJP. However, prior to the 2014 Assembly polls,
the alliance was broken. In 2016, Bishnoi met top Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and merged his party with the Congress. In the 2019 polls, he defeated BJP candidate Sonali Phogat in Adampur.
Talking to media persons at Uklana Tuesday, Bishnoi said the Congress needs to rise above factionalism for defeating the ruling BJP-JJP combine. He also said he would speak only “after a few days” about his meeting with the AICC leadership.
During senior Haryana Congress leaders’ meeting held by Rahul Gandhi in Delhi last month, Bishnoi had staked claim over the HPCC president’s post, projecting himself as a non-Jat face. However, it was strongly opposed by Deepender Hooda, the son of Leader of the Opposition Bhupinder Singh Hooda, and some other leaders. Party sources said he was told that Bishnoi’s son Bhavya Bishnoi had finished third from Hisar in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and that his non-Jat argument was thus “not tenable” in Haryana’s current political situation.
The 67-year-old Dalit leader and ex-MLA, Udai Bhan, who has been appointed as the HPCC president by Congress chief Sonia Gandhi Wednesday, is known to be a staunch Hooda loyalist.
