A brief unscheduled meeting between former Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Central Hall in Parliament House has now prompted speculations of new political equations in the State in the run up to the upcoming Lok Sabha and State Assembly elections.
‘No permanent foes’
The August 17 meeting came barely a month after Mr. Hooda met Haryana Chief Minister and BJP leader Manohar Lal Khattar to discuss “Sutlej-Yamuna Link Canal issue”.
Further fuelling the speculations, Congress MLA from Rai, Jai Tirath Dahiya, has gone on record to say that “it would be naive to consider the meeting between two senior political leaders as an informal meeting” since the BJP leadership had been eyeing stalwart Jat leaders in the State.
He said there are no permanent friends or foes in politics, and that several inferences can be drawn from the meeting between the two leaders. Mr. Dahiya said the BJP was concerned about Jat votes in the State and the meeting between Mr. Modi and Mr. Hooda assumed significance in this context.
Mr. Hooda, however, has maintained that it was mere a courtesy meeting and that it was wrong to draw any political inference out of it. He said he knew Mr. Modi since he was Gujarat Chief Minister and would continue to meet him in the future as well.
Delay by Congress
Political observers believe that the meeting could have been prompted by delay on the part of the Congress high command to hand over the reins of the party to Mr. Hooda in Haryana, affecting a change in State leadership. Several MLAs considered loyal to Mr. Hooda have met Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi and Haryana in-charge Kamal Nath over the past few months seeking to replace Haryana Congress chief Ashok Tanwar with Mr. Hooda, but the high command is yet to make a decision on the matter.