Haryana Congress kicks-off six-day long 'parivartan yatra'

Former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and state Congress chief Ashok Tanwar set aside the reported factionalism in the state unit as they launched six-day long 'parivartan yatra' from the Congress headquarters in New Delhi in the morning. Senior leader Ghulam Nabi Azad, Hooda ask voters to throw out the Modi and the Khattar governments. Besides Azad, who is the Congress general secretary in charge of Haryana; Hooda, and Tanwar, Congress legislature party leader Kiran Choudhry, Rohtak MP Deepender Singh Hooda, Rajya Sabha MP Selja Kumari, former minister Ajay Yadav, former Assembly Speaker Kuldeep Sharma were among the leaders who were on the bus.

Tanwar -- who shared a seat with Hooda in the bus, on which pictures of the party's top central and state leaders were put up -- said: "The Congress will win all the 10 Lok Sabha seats. The yatra will cover all the constituencies over the next few days." Senior Congress leader and Adampur MLA Kuldeep Bishnoi, who has stayed away from meetings of the coordination committee formed recently, was conspicuous by his absence. The leaders halted at various points along the route that included Badshahpur (Gurugram), Dharuhera (Rewari), Kasola Chowk (Bawal) and Mandi Ateli (Mahendragarh), addressing public gatherings and interacting with the media.

Tanwar sought to brush aside the perceived factionalism in the state unit, underlining that the state unit was all united under the leadership of Congress chief Rahul Gandhi. Azad appealed to the people to strengthen the Congress' hands and bring the grand old party to power at the Centre and in Haryana. "People are fed up with the Modi and Khattar governments. They want 'parivartan' (change)," the leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha said. "It is time to teach a lesson to the BJP which has sown seeds of discord." Azad dubbed Chief Minister M L Khattar, who is a first-time MLA, an "inexperienced" leader, adding that the Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao scheme had become an empty slogan.

Hitting out at the Khattar regime, Hooda said the BJP had done nothing in the past four-and-a-half years. "All they did was event management about non-existing achievements.... People are waiting for polls to throw out both the Modi government, which has failed on all fronts, and the non-performing Khattar dispensation," the former chief minister said. When the bus was passing through Gurgaon, Tanwar raised the issue of the attack on a Muslim family in Bhondsi.

"The attack was carried out by goons owing allegiance to the BJP. It is shocking that the victim family kept dialling the police control room number for 32 times, but the police failed to respond to their distress calls," Tanwar claimed. Hooda alleged that the Gurgaon incident showed the "real and scary face" of the BJP's poor governance. The former chief minister said the activities to "tamper the nature" of the ecologically-sensitive Aravalli range tells how honest the BJP was.

Pointing out to the loan-waivers in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh after the Congress came to power last year, Hooda said the party would implement the Swaminathan report in letter and spirit. "The Congress president (Rahul Gandhi) has now promised Rs 72,000 annually to the 'poorest of the poor' in the country. The Congress will fulfil its promise," the former chief minister said. Choudhry, meanwhile, alleged that the Centre and the state government had misled the people with false promises. The 'parivartan' yatra will end at Palwan in Faridabad on Sunday.