Congress general secretary and Rajya Sabha MP Birendar Singh has recommended Union Minister Kumari Selja for the post of Haryana Pradesh Congress Committee (HPCC) president.
Addressing party workers at Uklana in Haryana, he said Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment Selja should be made chief of the HPCC and her appointment would strengthen the party in the state.
“Congress legislator Naresh Selwal has raised the problems of his constituency and I support him fully. Party workers should boldly raise their demands so that even the chief minister has to listen to the problems,” he said. “ In the past, some partymen had demanded the ouster of Selja, Kiran Chaudhry, Ajay Yadav and mine too, from the party. I ask them who they are to make such a demand from the high command. It is we people who have made Congress a strong party in the crisis. These people were admitted to the party by us,” Birendar noted. Since the Congress follows a one-man-one-post principle, there are not many takers for the presidentship of the Haryana Congress among senior leaders, as that would mean quitting their current post. Currently, the names of Selja, State Power Minister Ajay Singh Yadav, and Gurgoan MP and former Union Minister Rao Inderjit are doing the rounds.
Birendra was himself in the race, but he can only be appointed party president if a Jat becomes the chief minister. It is an unwritten law in the party that both posts would not go to one community, said sources.
The Congress has been looking for a new chief for its Haryana unit since Phool Chand Mullana quit the post, in 2011, owning moral responsibility for the party’s humiliating defeat in the Hisar Lok Sabha by-poll in the same year.