The rift in the Haryana Congress surfaced at a meeting where the party's state unit chief Ashok Tanwar faced fire over the recent poll debacle, prompting him to say, “If you want to finish me, shoot me”, a participant recalled.
A party leader who attended the meeting summoned Tuesday in New Delhi by Ghulam Nabi Azad, the Haryana in-charge at the AICC, claimed Tanwar was targeted by some MLAs close to former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda.
The MLAs pressed for a leadership change in Haryana over the party's failure to win any of the 10 Lok Sabha seats in the state. When contacted Thursday, Ashok Tanwar said he will continue to work towards strengthening the Congress “as long as my party president and my party leadership want”. The meeting was attended by all 17 Congress MLAs from the state and lasted over two hours, a Haryana Congress leader said.