Sonia asks Shinde to probe infighting in Haryana unit

Ashok Tanwar was injured at the Bhairon Temple after Rahul Gandhi's brief stopover where the supporters of both Tanwar and Hooda clashed

Concerned over infighting in the Haryana Congress, which showed its ugly face last Thursday, party Chief Sonia Gandhi has asked Sushil Kumar Shinde to probe the attack on state unit head Ashok Tanwar by the supporters of former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda.

Tanwar was injured at after Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi had a brief stopover at the place where supporters clashed.

The incident took place on a day when Rahul trained his guns at Modi over the surgical strikes against terrorists, but left senior party leaders deeply worried. Besides Rahul, veterans like Ahmed Patel, Motilal Vora, Janardan Dwivedi rushed to the RML hospital to see Tanwar.

Next day, Haryana CM Manohar Lal Khattar, too, made a surprise visit to the hospital, in an attempt to further embarrass the Congress.

Tanwar, who earlier worked with Rahul as Youth Congress chief was named by him as Haryana unit chief months ahead of the 2014 national polls.

Since then the Hooda camp, which claims to be the champion of the powerful Jat community, has been showing signs of unease over the appointment of Tanwar, a dalit leader.

While Hooda and Tanwar had heated arguments over the distribution of tickets for assembly polls in 2014, Hooda’s supports hooted Tanwar at a mega farmers’ rally organized by Rahul in Delhi in 2015.

Clearly, any further division over caste lines in the Haryana unit can severely damage the Congress.

“There is no way other than asking the two—Hooda and Tanwar – to sit together and make them work for the party together,” a senior AICC functionary said.

The appointment of Shinde, a veteran dalit leader from Maharashtra, to probe the incident and submit a report to Sonia at the earliest, indicates the concern among the top layers over the issue.

While Rahul has been attacking the BJP led central and state governments of neglecting the atrocities on dalits, the attack on Tanwar could be exploited by the rivals to corner the Congress in Haryana.

Shinde also happens to a member of anti-disciplinary action committee of the AICC headed by former defence minister AK Antony.

“There is no place for violence in the Congress,” AICC communication department chief Randeep Surjewla, who is a lawmaker in Haryana, said.