Gurugram: When the fifteenth Haryana meeting convenes for its Monsoon Session from Friday, it will mark a doubtful milestone within the state’s legislature’s historical past—the third consecutive session with out a designated Chief of the Opposition.

This unprecedented scenario underscores the Congress get together’s persevering with organisational turmoil following its shock electoral defeat within the October 2024 polls which went towards pre-poll predictions of a snug victory.

This non-appointment of the LoP has left an institutional vacuum within the 90-member Haryana meeting, the place the Congress had 37 seats towards the 48 seats received by the ruling BJP with a vote share distinction of lower than one %. The Congress bought 39.09 % votes towards 39.94 of the BJP within the 2024 Haryana meeting polls.

Technically, the Congress has sufficient numbers to stake its declare for the LoP submit.

The fifteenth Meeting constituted after the elections held its first session (Winter Session) from November 19 to 25 in 2024. In 2025, the meeting met for the Funds Session from March 7 to twenty-eight. And now, it will likely be assembly from August 22 to 26 for this yr’s Monsoon Session.

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Put up-poll dilemma

Jyoti Mishra, an assistant political science professor at Mohali’s Amity College, informed ThePrint the Congress has been left with a dilemma following the October 2024 meeting elections, which went towards all exit ballot forecasts.

She mentioned that high pollsters had predicted a easy Congress win and a few of them indicated that the get together wouldn’t solely breach the midway mark by itself however can get 55 to 60 seats within the 90-member meeting. The outcomes turned out to be a crushing defeat, which left the get together’s state unit in a shambles.

Whereas speaking to ThePrint on the situation of anonymity, a Haryana Congress MLA indicated the management disaster has been additional aggravated by factional battles and the dearth of correct curiosity from the get together’s central brass so far as the difficulty of LoP is anxious.

“Although the get together has been working exhausting organising organisation within the state, the central management isn’t displaying the identical type of alacrity within the matter,” the MLA mentioned.

The episode has been embarrassing for the state Congress generally and former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda particularly. He was the Chief of the Opposition between 2019 and 2024.

The Haryana authorities in December final yr issued a discover to Hooda to vacate his official bungalow in Chandigarh Sector 7. He’s but to vacate the premises, searching for extra time.

The ready sport 

B.Okay. Hariprasad, the incharge of the All India Congress Committee for Haryana, admitted the delay however was hopeful of a swift decision. “The method for the election of the LoP is in progress and it will likely be accomplished very quickly,” he informed ThePrint Thursday.

The explanations he outlined for the delay threw mild on the intricacies of decision-making throughout the Congress hierarchy.

“RahulJi (Rahul Gandhi, Chief of the Opposition in Lok Sabha) is engaged in his yatra (in Bihar). Even VenugopalJi (Okay.C. Venugopal, common secretary, incharge, organisation within the AICC) is equally engaged. I tried to contact him (Venugopal) yesterday, however was unable to take action as he was too occupied. I’ll make one other try at this time. As soon as they discover time, the LoP challenge in Haryana will likely be resolved very shortly,” Hariprasad added.

Curiously, when the Congress launched the method for organising organisation within the state earlier this yr, it was thought the get together would tackle the difficulty of LoP too. However, this didn’t occur.

The Congress has launched a long-overdue organisational shake-up, with Rahul Gandhi setting the method rolling in a day-long journey to Chandigarh 4 June.

In a series of conferences with senior leaders as a part of the ‘Sangathan Srijan Abhiyan’ (organisation creation marketing campaign), Gandhi careworn zero tolerance to factionalism, merit-based appointments, and growing ideology-driven staff as a substitute of staff with “hyperlinks to so and so”.

The train, the largest shake-up within the Haryana Congress in 11 years, reached its climax lately with the announcement of 32 district presidents, marking a transition away from the get together’s traditionally Jat-dominated base in the direction of wider caste illustration, together with OBCs and Dalits, as an try to match the BJP’s social engineering.

But, the essential query of the Chief of Opposition stays unresolved.

The importance of LoP

The Chief of the Opposition performs numerous essential roles, proper from collaborating within the enterprise advisory committee conferences, to spearheading opposition enterprise in the home, liaison with different opposition events, and maybe most significantly, making certain that the ruling get together is subjected to correct scrutiny of its selections and insurance policies.

“The Chief of the Opposition isn’t merely a ceremonial determine however a key part of our parliamentary system,” the Congress MLA quoted earlier defined. “Their absence means the voice of the opposition will get watered down, making parliamentary oversight much less efficient.”

The LoP can be privileged to be consulted on some appointments, corresponding to in statutory our bodies and commissions. Within the case of Haryana, this void has resulted within the institutional function of the opposition in governance being undermined for nearly 10 months.

When the state authorities was to make appointments to the posts of chief data commissioner and knowledge commissioners in Could, the federal government wrote to the Congress requesting the get together to appoint a consultant because the get together didn’t have an LoP.

The get together’s state president, Udai Bhan, had then nominated Hooda for this goal.

(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)

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