Rift widens, Haryana Congress chief under pressure to step down

Gurgaon: The fissures in Congress surfaced again on Tuesday when the party’s national general secretary (OBC cell) Rahul Yadav demanded the resignation of Haryana party president Ashok Tanwar.
Yadav alleged Tanwar did not perform well as a state Congress chief, which led to the party’s debacle in the Lok Sabha elections.
Speaking to TOI, he said the Congress faced a humiliating defeat in the elections and it happened owing to poor organisational structure.
“There is no Congress committee in the state for the past five years. Under Tanwar’s leadership, the party lost two Lok Sabha polls and one assembly election. The party also lost Jind bypolls, mayoral elections of five districts and municipal elections of Gurgaon,” he said.
Yadav said the state party chief should take the responsibility for the Congress’s disastrous defeat in the polls and tender his resignation. He said the Congress high command should remove Tanwar and appoint a “responsible person” at the post.
He further said the assembly election is not far, and therefore the party high command must address these concerns on a priority basis. “I’m sure if the party structure is revamped, it will win the state elections,” he said.
In the past too, senior Congress leaders, including former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, have criticised the party’s “weak organisational structure”. There have been demands for a revamp in the structure of the party and change of its Haryana president.
There have been strong speculations that former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and MLA Kuldeep Bishnoi are among front-runners for the post of state president and (CLP) legislative party leader.
The party leaders have been demanding that the state Congress chief be changed in a move to strengthen the party’s district- and block-level units.
Earlier, Hooda had said the party should work for strengthening its position at the grass root level.