CHANDIGARH: With assembly elections in Haryana just a month away, the Congress is likely to replace state Congress president Ashok Tanwar, who is considered close to Rahul Gandhi, with former Union minister Kumari Selja.
Sources said the party high command is understood to have decided to replace Tanwar, a Dalit leader who was appointed as state party chief in February 2014.
In order to balance the power equations within the party in the state, the Congress, in all likelihood, will also appoint four working presidents to assist Selja, accommodating different castes and combinations. One of the working presidents could be former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda’s son and ex-Rohtak MP Deepender Hooda.
It is learnt that under the compromise formula, the party is likely to appoint Hooda Senior as the head of the campaign committee in order to show that it has not succumbed to his pressure tactics and at the same time avoid antagonising him.
Hooda is a prominent Jat leader and has twice been chief minister. The Hooda faction is expecting that the party high command would offer him a key position in accordance with his stature and thus prevent him for forming his own party just ahead of the elections.
Hooda and Tanwar had been on loggerheads and the bitter infighting cost the Congress dear as it lost the Lok Sabha elections.