New Delhi: In a bid to send a signal about its zero tolerance approach towards indiscipline, the Congress party has cracked down on one of its senior leaders.
The party has sacked former national general secretary Chaudhary Birender Singh from its apex decision making body — the Congress Working Committee — and issued him a show cause notice for hobnobbing with the rival Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Singh has been asked to explain why he should not be expelled for his anti-party activities.
Singh, a staunch critic of the Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, was seen in the company of BJP president Amit Shah in a photograph that went viral on social networking sites, forcing the central leadership of the Congress party to crack the whip.
An unperturbed Singh has refused to deny reports that he is likely to join the BJP saying, “I neither deny nor accept this”.
“A vast majority of them (his supporters) said that I should quit Congress and join the BJP,” Singh, who represents Haryana in the Rajya Sabha, said.
Singh is expected to formally announce his decision to join the BJP at a rally he is scheduled to address along with BJP chief Shah on August 18 at Kaithal in Haryana. Singh intends to demonstrate his muscle by getting half a million people to attend the rally in a bid to silence those who term him as a spent force.
Singh will be the second senior Congress party leader to join the BJP. Incumbent federal minister Rao Inderjit Singh quit Congress and contested the May general election as a BJP nominee from the Gurgaon Lok Sabha seat.
BJP is buoyant about its chances of coming to power on its own for the first time in the northern state of Haryana, which is scheduled to elect its new state legislative assembly in September-October this year after winning seven out of 10 Lok Sabha seats of Haryana.
Singh, 68, is a third generation politician and a powerful Jat community leader. His entry would give a big boost to BJP’s hopes and give them a foothold in Haryana as the party has so far failed to penetrate the influential Jat community voters.
While details of his deal with the BJP are not yet known to the public, the BJP is expected to nominate about a dozen of Singh’s followers for the upcoming state polls. It is, however, unlikely that Singh’s aspirations of becoming the Haryana chief minister will be fulfilled even though the BJP has decided against projecting anyone as its chief ministerial candidate.
Singh was close to becoming the Haryana chief minister when the Congress party came to power in 2004. But the party chose to appoint Hooda to the state’s top post. He lost the 2009 state polls by a small margin and openly accused chief minister Hooda of ensuring his defeat lest he emerges a threat to him.
For the past one year Singh has been damaging the party he has served for 42 years by targeting Hooda at every possible occasion. “Bhupinder Singh Hooda did not listen to anyone in the last nine years,” Singh said, predicting that the Congress party would not be able to cross double digits in the 90-member Haryana assembly.
