Kiran Choudhary made CLP leader in Haryana

NEW DELHI: Kiran Choudhary, daughter-in-law of late Bansi Lal, was today made the Congress Legislature Party leader in Haryana where the party lost power after a 10-year rule under Bhupinder Singh Hooda.

Choudhary, who was a Minister in the previous Hooda government, was named the CLP leader by party chief Sonia Gandhi after she was asked by the MLAs to decide the issue, party general secretary Shakeel Ahmed said.

Her name has been announced amid a tussle between the detractors and supporters of Hooda to wrest the leadership of the state Congress after the party not only lost power in the recent Assembly polls, but also finished third.

The anti-Hooda leaders had impressed upon the high command that the naming of the Congress Legislature Party leader should be used as a political opportunity to start afresh after Hooda's 10-year rule.

Soon after Manohar Lal Kattar, a non-Jat, was named CM as an appreciation of consolidation of the anti-Jat votes behind the BJP, the anti-Hooda camp in the state was pitching for electing a new Jat leader as head of CLP. Choudhary belongs to the Jat community.

The party has done a balancing act by appointing her as CLP leader as PCC chief of Haryana Ashok Tanwar is from Dalit community.

Senior leader from the state and former Union Minister Kumari Selja, a prominent Dalit face in the state, has been critical of the style of functioning of Hooda and held the view that he should take responsibility for the defeat.

She had also hit out at Hooda after the party lost badly in Lok Sabha polls, winning only one of the ten Parliamentary seats there.

Senior Congress leaders Rao Inderjit Singh and Chaudhary Birender Singh, who were also detractors of Hooda and quit Congress to join BJP, are now Union Ministers in the Narendra Modi government.