JOIN USThe Haryana Janhit Congress (HJC) on Thursday decided to snap ties with the BJP, bringing to an end its three-year old alliance in Haryana ahead of Assembly elections in the state.
The HJC, led by its president Kuldeep Bishnoi, accused the BJP of betrayal. Kuldeep said HJC leaders were driven to a point of no return after the ally BJP declined to honour terms and conditions of the alliance that were formally penned down, perhaps, for the first time by two allying political parties in the form of a contract signed by top leaders of both the BJP and the HJC.
This will mean that the BJP will contest the Assembly elections independently in Haryana, something which the saffron party had been keen on.
Countering Bishnoi’s charges, BJP spokesperson Shahnawaz Hussain accused the HJC of living in “delusion” to overlook the ground reality and said Bishnoi would end up working as B-team of Congress. “We wanted him (Bishnoi) to understand ground realities. Any understanding is rooted in the facts on ground. He has left us as B-team of Congress.
He had six MLAs and all of them except him joined Congress. He is a general without an army. We have never betrayed any ally,” fomer MP Hussain said. He confirmed that the party will fight the elections alone.
Hussain was of the view that equations between both parties had nose-dived during Lok Sabha polls post BJP’s refusal to entertain Bishnoi’s proposal to engage Vinod Sharma, a close aide of the Haryana chief minister, who had quit Congress to float his own party.
Other than that, Hussain said BJP denied a ticket to Bishnoi’s brother Chandra Mohan in the elections. Bishnoi, flanked by former Union minister and ex-Congressman Vinod Sharma, father of Jessica Lal murder convict Manu Sharma, on Thursday announced that his party will fight the upcoming Assembly elections with Sharma’s newly formed Haryana Chetna Party.
Addressing newspersons, Bishnoi said, “We tried our best to keep the alliance working… made sincere efforts…They (BJP) tried to throttle us and were not ready to stick to agreed alliance terms. So we have taken this decision. Betrayal is in the nature of BJP. It has done this with all its allies in the past in Haryana,” he said.