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Geetanjali Gayatri
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, April 17
The state Congress is clear on one thing: it needs no partners in Haryana. The Congress has already declared candidates for six out of 10 seats. The remaining four candidates are likely to be declared shortly.
The state leadership insists that the delay in declaring the candidates for the Sonepat, Karnal, Hisar and Kurukshetra seats has nothing to do with the talks of an alliance, but it is being said that the Congress wanted to avoid the situation of dropping the candidates later if an alliance had worked out.
Haryana Congress campaign committee head Bhupinder Singh Hooda downplayed a meeting between Haryana general secretary in charge of the party affairs Ghulam Nabi Azad and AAP’s Sanjay Singh in New Delhi on Wednesday by claiming that it was a “regular meeting”.
“We are confident of going it alone in the Lok Sabha elections. But it should be kept in mind that ours is a national party. If an alliance is forged at the central level, the party might can end up having an alliance in Haryana. The state Congress will not enter into any alliance all by itself,” Hooda said, adding the delay in declaration of candidates for the four seats had nothing to do with the talks of an alliance.
State Congress chief Ashok Tanwar, too, maintained that the party was in a winning position all by itself in Haryana and did not need an alliance partner.
“We will go it alone. This is what has always been conveyed to the Congress central leadership,” Tanwar said, adding that the remaining four candidates could be declared in a couple of days.
Meanwhile, sources said today’s meeting of two senior leaders of the Congress and AAP in New Delhi could not end on a “settlement” on an alliance.