Haryana polls: Selja and Hooda by his side, Rahul Gandhi says BJP dividing people

New Delhi: Putting to rest all speculation of a divided house, warring Haryana Congress leaders Bhupinder Singh Hooda and Kumari Selja made a joint appearance at the election rally of leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, in Assandh.

The two leaders were seen seated on either side of Gandhi during the public meeting at Assandh in Karnal. The joint appearance is being seen as a bid by the Congress party to dispel any notion of a brewing dissent within its state unit, an issue that boiled over during ticket-distribution in the state. This was the first public appearance by Selja, who has stayed away from the campaign for October 5 assembly elections. She was also conspicuously absent from the party's manifesto launch. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge intervened on Sunday and met Selja who conveyed her grievances. She was then persuaded to return to campaign.

It has been widely reported that Hooda, the de facto face of the Congress' campaign in the state, had the maximum say in the allocation of tickets, cornering as many as 72 tickets for his loyalists out of the 90 candidates fielded by the party in the state. Miffed with the free hand Hooda was given, Selja decided to stay put in her Delhi home and not join the campaign.


At the rally, Gandhi hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over unemployment and accused him of "systematically" ending the employment system of the country. He raised the issue of caste census and also accused the BJP of dividing people and pitting them against each other. "The Congress is going to sweep the Haryana elections. A storm is coming and we will form the government," Gandhi said.

The former Congress chief referred to his recent visit to the US and said he met some youths from Haryana who went there in search of a better future as they were unable to get employment opportunities in their state. Gandhi said he found that 15 to 20 Haryana youths were staying in one room in Dallas. The Congress leader said he asked them how they reached America and came to know about their ordeal of travelling through countries such as Kazakhstan and Turkey as well as South American nations and the jungles of Panama, to reach the US. They were looted by the mafia on their way to the US and even saw their brothers dying, Gandhi said.