Congress party vice-president Rahul Gandhi has refused the changing of the guard in some of the poll-bound states and has warned rebels to stop working against the state governments.

Moreover, Rahul conveyed this message to a group of party lawmakers including those belonging to Haryana at a casual meeting with them in the parliament house. Among those present at the meeting were federal minister Kumari Selja and former minister Rao Inderjit Singh and that both Selja and Singh have been publicly complaining against neglect in development in their Lok Sabha constituencies Ambala and Gurgaon respectively by the Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda.

In fact on Sunday, Singh had gone to the extent of addressing a huge rally at Pataudi in Gurgaon district and announced his decision to launch Haryana Insaaf Manch (justice forum) which many see as a precursor of his intention of launching his own political outfit if his demand is not met by the central leadership of the party.

At the same time, some senior leaders belonging to Delhi have also been talking against the Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit while federal minister Ajay Maken recently blamed the Dikshit government’s decision to trifurcate the erstwhile Municipal Corporation of Delhi into three corporations for the party’s route in the recent municipal elections in the metropolis, the state unit president Jai Prakash Agarwal blamed non-cooperation from the Dikshit government for its failure as the rival Bharatiya Janata Party managed to come to power in all three municipal corporations. It seems that while Delhi will have its assembly elections later this year, Haryana will go to polls next year.

Rahul Gandhi was quoted as saying by a Haryana member of parliament in Hooda’s defence that he have got allegations of bias in government jobs and development schemes verified and find them untrue.

Moreover, Haryana lawmakers opposed to Hooda’s alleged autocratic style of functioning are not amused by this and they doubt if he [Rahul] is getting a correct picture.

A Haryana Congress leader opposed to the state chief minister that Deepender Singh Hooda [Hooda’s parliamentarian son] is his close associate while his brother-in-law Robert Vadra has received so many favours in matters of his real estate dealings by the Hooda government.

On Tuesday, as the main subject of attention it came up from Rahul Gandhi saying that becoming prime minister of the country was not his top priority while affirming that he wanted to strengthen the party and empower lawmakers.

(AW:Samrat Biswas)