Campaigning for a congressional seat; party division might be detrimental

The Congress is engaged in frantic lobbying on the distribution of party tickets for the next Lok Sabha elections.

Rival faction leaders are vying for tickets for their followers, and each wants to get the majority of the party’s ticket sales. Political observers predict that although the BJP would not be able to repeat its previous election-winning performance of capturing all 10 Lok Sabha seats in Haryana, the Congress leadership will need to rise to the occasion and mount a determined defense. The leaders of Congress even support this claim.

Former Haryana Home Minister and prominent Congressman Subhash Batra claims that “the Congress can get the benefit of the anti-incumbency factor only if its leaders sink their personal differences and put up a united fight against the BJP.”

However, experts believe that there is little probability of such a significant shift occurring since the candidates’ closeness to their faction’s leader is more important than their likelihood of winning the ticket.

According to party sources, there is currently a contest between incumbent MLA Rao Dan Singh and former Bhiwani-Mahendragarh MP Shruti Choudhry for the Congress ticket from the Bhiwani-Mahendragarh seat.

Strangely, Rao Dan Singh, a close associate of the late Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, is also being promoted for the Gurugram seat, where Capt. Ajay Yadav, a prominent Congress politician and former Haryana minister, is also a contender. Brijendra Singh, a former Lok Sabha member from Hisar who quit the BJP, is probably going to run as a candidate from Hisar for the Congress. Given that he won the seat in the most recent elections, he seems to be a serious candidate. But according to party insiders, Brijendra is also eager to run for the Sonepat seat, even if the Hooda camp is against the notion.

It’s no secret that political parties are full with factions, and the Congress is no exception. As long as the parties have strong central leaderships, it works for them. The Congress’s core leadership is much weaker than it once was. Thus, the existence of competing factions inside the party and internal strife might be detrimental to the Congress’s chances, notes Dr. Rajendra Sharma, a political science professor at the MDU in Rohtak.