New Delhi: In a big jolt to the Congress party, Haryana power minister Capt Ajay Singh Yadav yesterday resigned from the post accusing state chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda of irregularities.
Yadav, a six-time state lawmaker from Rewari, was miffed with Hooda ever since he played a key role in denying his son Chiranjeev Rao nomination to contest Lok Sabha elections from Gurgaon.
Yadav said that he had sent his resignation to the chief minister and announced that he had only quit as a minister and was not going to resign from the party.
Congress party fared poorly by winning just one out of 10 Lok Sabha seats of Haryana in the May general elections.
“The party failed to learn any lessons from the Lok Sabha debacle,” Capt Yadav who had served in the Indian Army in the past said.
Yadav joins a list of senior Congress party leaders from Haryana who have come out in the open against the functioning of Hooda who will be seeking third-term in power in the September-October Haryana state legislative assembly elections. Chaudhary Birender Singh and former federal minister Kumari Selja criticised Hooda for his lopsided development which has benefited only his home district Rohtak and its surrounding areas of central Haryana.
Yadav is the tallest Ahir community leader in the Congress party after his mentor and incumbent federal minister Rao Inderjit Singh quit the Congress party and joined rival Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) just ahead of the last general elections.
Three big caste leaders — Chaudhary Birender Singh (Jat), Kumari Selja (Scheduled Caste) and Capt Yadav (Ahir) — coming out in the open against chief minister Hooda may hurt the beleaguered Congress party.
“I had to make the sacrifice of resigning under compulsion when the bias in matter of development, recruitment, induction of members of various commissions and other statutory bodies, domination of the bureaucracy and neglect of party cadres, including MLAs continued and the party failed to learn any lesson from the Lok Sabha debacle,” Yadav said.
Yadav trained his guns at Hooda after putting in his papers saying he had quit Hooda government and not the party, as Hooda was not the Congress party.
“I told Hooda that you have reduced me to a rubber stamp since the portfolio of power does not have any significance,” Yadav said, adding that he had made up his mind to quit as a minister three years ago when the much fancied finance ministry was taken away from him, but continued silently as he did not want to weaken the party.
Many believe that Yadav, whose son Chiranjeev Rao is married to Bihar strongman Lalu Prasad Yadav’s daughter, may have chosen an escape route as the onus was on him to lead the party in about a dozen Yadav-dominated constituencies of south Haryana after Rao Inderjit Singh quit the party.
It is not yet clear if Yadav would seek to retain his Rewari assembly seat in the upcoming state elections as pre-poll surveys suggest he may find it tough to win the Rewari seat for the seventh consecutive term without blessings of Rao Inderjit who will campaign for his new party BJP.
