Bhajan junior joins oust-Hooda chorus

NEW DELHI: The Bhajan Lal camp of the faction-ridden Haryana Congress is continuing with its campaign against chief minister BS Hooda even after the party high command has distanced herself from the whole affair.

Smarting under the AICC decision to accept Mr Lalo’s resignation from the PCC presidentship, his son and Congress MP, Kuldeep Bishnoi, on Sunday demanded a change of guard in Haryana and announced an agitation against the SEZ deal signed between the state government and Reliance Industries.

Alleging that the law and order situation had worsened in the state, particularly in Mr Hooda’s hometown Rohtak, Mr Bishnoi told a press conference in Chandigarh that the chief minister “has not only proven himself inexperienced, but incompetent as well”.

Sonia Gandhi, he said, should hold a meeting of the MLAs from the state and seek their preferences for electing a new leader. Asked if his outbursts were attempts to force the Congress to expel him and pave way for his family to float a separate political party, Mr. Bishnoi said, “Congress is in our (family’s) blood. I cannot even think of it.”

He said Bhajan Lal was not planning any new party or non-political front. “If standing by common man in his hour of crisis amounts to violating party discipline then I am prepared to face the music,” Mr Bishnoi said. While clarifying that he had already replied to the show-cause notice.

Asked if he had a green signal for his agitation from his father and elder brother and deputy chief minister Chander Mohan, Mr Bishnoi said though the family stood united, everyone was free to take decisions and entitled to their views. Mr Bishnoi said his father would meet supporters and start a “mass contact programme” from July 20, at the end of which a “big rally” has been planned sometime in September.

“The situation in Haryana is going from bad to worse.... Be it the recent industrial unrest in Panipat or Karnal or last year’s police-workers clash in Gurgaon or the Gohana incident, all these have dented the image of our party,” he said.

Repeating his attack against the state government-Reliance SEZ deal, Mr Bishnoi said the deal had raised several questions over the state’s decision to “transfer one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in Haryana to a corporate house (Reliance) at a throwaway price.”

Asked if he was joining issues with INLD and BJP which were also opposing the deal on various grounds, he said he was raising his voice in the interests of the common people while others were doing it for “political considerations”.

Calling the Reliance deal the “biggest scam of Haryana”, Mr Bishnoi alleged that Mr Hooda had misled the media and people on the SEZ issue.

He announced an “aam aadmi adhikar andolan” on July 18 against the Rs 25,000-crore RIL-HSIIDC venture in which, he alleged, farmers whose land had been acquired had only been paid Rs 20,70,000 per acre against an estimated market price of Rs 2 crore.

Mr Bishnoi said he will start the agitation from Khandsa village in Gurgaon district and visit four other villages where the government had acquired land.