Chandigarh: It's a hung assembly in Haryana. No party is able to win a majority in the 90-member Haryana legislative assembly. BJP lost the battle, the mandate and the required majority to form the government in Chandigarh.
For Manohar Lal Khattar, it was all looking rosy till Bhupinder Singh Hooda entered the fray. The opposition was divided and the Congress party was literally in tatters.
Khattar government was eyeing at another stint at power. BJP was upbeat to win 75 seats and had even coined the slogan 'abki baar 75 paar'. BJP did little realise that the ground underneath was shaky.
Enter Bhupinder Singh Hooda, two-time chief minister. A giant jat leader Bhupinder Singh was not given the baton to lead by the Congress party in Haryana by choice, Hooda rather snatched it from the party high command. The Congress duo of Bhupinder Singh Hooda and Kumari Selja led the party from the front.
Hooda attacked on the grey areas of the Khattar government while Kumari Selja united the party cadre, diminishing caste lines and groupings within the party. There was a time when Hooda was completely shunted out of Haryana politics after his defeat at the hands of the BJP.
There were corruption charges against his government over executing scores of alleged illegal land deals with Robert Vadra. CBI interrogated him on many counts but Hooda never got bogged down by circumstances. He nursed his constituency like never before and in a matter of two months, he is back in the reckoning again. Bhupinder Singh Hooda is supposed to be a close confidant of Sonia Gandhi.
He grabbed the opportunity with both hands after Congress party's loss in Lok Sabha election coupled with the exit of Rahul Gandhi from the post of party president. There was a time when Bhupinder Singh Hooda was mulling the idea of joining Bharatiya Janata Party.
According to media reports, Hooda already had met Amit Shah a couple of times.This news perhaps prompted Congress party to accord Hooda the leadership position in Haryana Congress. Due to Sonia's indulgence, Hooda was made in-charge of Haryana's campaign committee.
It's Hooda who had stood by Sonia Gandhi after Rajiv Gandhi's death. He had reportedly spurned PV Narsimha Rao and supported the political novice Sonia Gandhi then in 1993.
Hooda was among 24 MPs, who led the demand for the ouster of Rao government and clamoured for Sonia Gandhi to lead the party after Congress party's ignominious defeat in 1996. Hooda was an unsuccessful lawyer in his hometown in Rohtak but there was always an inspiration for him home to join politics, first his father Ranbir Singh, a legendary freedom fighter and Chaudhary Matu Ram, the tallest farmer leader in undivided Punjab.
Vadra-DLF land deal is still an unfinished case, haunting him for the last five years. Bhupinder Singh Hooda has led the Congress from the front without any active support from Gandhi family. His Congress party is still short of a majority but his role of reviving Congress in Haryana is nonetheless, very significant. Now it all depends on how he musters the majority for his party.
