Assembly poll: Old guards save the day for Opposition

New Delhi: Thursday’s Assembly poll results show that old remains gold as far as the Congress is concerned with Jat strongman Bhupinder Singh Hooda and key ally Sharad Pawar helping it garner a decent seat count in Haryana and Maharashtra.

Largely written off by the pollsters, who had predicted a tally of less than 10 seats in both states for the Congress, the proverbial old guard of the party showed its mettle.

The biggest takeaway was in Haryana where the senior Hooda and his son Deepinder had been embroiled in a bitter turf battle with then state PCC chief Ashok Tanwar. Tanwar, who was seen to be a Rahul Gandhi’s pick, fought bitterly to save his post, but eventually was ousted when the Hoodas threatened to leave the party.

Bowing to the pressure tactic, Congress president Sonia Gandhi removed Tanwar and made Dalit leader Kumari Selja the new PCC chief and Bhupinder Hooda the chief of the campaign committee as well as the legislative party leader.

After this, it was Tanwar’s turn to rebel which he did by announcing his support for JJP’s Dushyant Chautala.

The bitter rivalry continued during campaigning with things coming to such a pass that Hooda did not even attend the two rallies by Rahul Gandhi.

The results were though satisfactory for the Congress with Hooda largely delivering with a kitty of 31 seats in an election which had earlier been seen to be a no contest.

In Maharashtra, the party adopted a completely different strategy by outsourcing the entire campaign to Pawar. The old war horse, an ex-Congressman, not only retained his own pocketburough of Marathwada intact, but also helped the NCP-Congress alliance breach the respectable mark of 100 seats.

The veterans versus new leadership rivalry in Congress came out in the open right after the Lok Sabha polls.

Days after the results of the general elections, Gandhi had resigned as the party president owing responsibility for the defeat. Sources say what he probably expected that all of the top leadership would follow suit thus helping him effect a structural change. However, what it led to was a bitter turf war between the old and new leaders.

While many of Rahul Gandhi loyalists or the “new guard” quit, the old leadership largely stayed put though officially asking Gandhi to continue. It was only after three months since the May 23 results that Sonia Gandhi took over as the interim chief.