States » NorthPosted at: Oct 4 2026 7:40PM


Ex-Haryana Speaker Kuldeep Sharma targets Hooda, urges Congress to abandon CM-face politics

Panchkula, Oct 4 (UNI) Former Haryana Assembly Speaker and Congress leader Kuldeep Sharma has launched a sharp attack on former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and his son Deepender Singh Hooda, arguing that projecting individual leaders as chief ministerial candidates has hurt the party in Haryana and restricted its ability to build a broader political coalition.
In a letter addressed to Haryana Congress in-charge Sanjay Dutt, Sharma backed Congress leader Sachin Pilot's recent suggestion that the party should contest elections under collective leadership, with Rahul Gandhi leading the campaign.
Sharma, a former MLA and AICC member, said fighting elections on the Congress's “core ideology” rather than around a particular chief ministerial face would give voters a wider choice and prevent the party from being identified with one leader or family.
“Similar would be the case in Haryana, where we have had to repeatedly face losses at the hustings owing to the projection of one person, and now his son as the chief minister,” Sharma wrote in the letter.
The remarks amount to a direct challenge to the political positioning of the Hooda camp within the Haryana Congress.
Sharma alleged that the push to project Deepender Singh Hooda as the party's chief ministerial face for 2029 was limiting the Congress's outreach and making it difficult to build a broad-based coalition of groups aligned with the party.
He argued that projecting a chief ministerial candidate well before an election might benefit the individual concerned but could prove damaging for the organisation by narrowing the party's political message.
Sharma said such politics “takes away the possibilities of rebuilding the Congress party in Haryana in line with its core ethos” and reduces the party's broader socio-economic message to the public image of an individual leader.
He urged the party leadership to put an end to what he described as actions by “one person” that were damaging the organisation and instead implement a collective leadership model in Haryana.
Sharma also asked that the question of the party's future chief ministerial candidate be left to the Congress central leadership.
Copies of the letter were marked to Haryana Congress president Rao Narender Singh and Congress general secretary K C Venugopal, besides Sanjay Dutt.
UNI KK RSA
Tags: #Ex-Haryana Speaker Kuldeep Sharma targets Hooda# urges Congress to abandon CM-face politics
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