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Hooda woos Jats in Rajasthan

JAIPUR: Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda on Thursday joined his Congress colleagues in Rajasthan in what appeared to be an effort to bring back the estranged Jat community to the party fold prior to the Assembly elections scheduled in the State.

Mr. Hooda, coming late by a good seven hours by helicopter to the venue in Jaipur’s Kotpuli area, spoke in unison with Congress general secretary Ashok Gehlot and the party MP from Dausa, Sachin Pilot, at a function unveiling the statue of Jat icon Maharaja Surajmal on farmers being natural allies of the Congress.

Jat Mahasabha president Raja Ram Meel, who recently announced his support to the Congress in the coming elections, was also present.

“Politically speaking, Jat dharma is Congress,” Mr. Hooda told a crowd comprising mostly Jats, Yadavs and Gujjars in this town on the Delhi-Jaipur stretch of National Highway-11. He said the BJP in Rajasthan lacked concern for farmers.

Mr. Meel said if only the Congress got more than 156 seats in the coming elections, Jats would be able to claim that they had fully supported the party.

Mr. Hooda also came out with the disclosure that it was his father, along with Sardar Patel, who had negotiated with the then Bharatpur Maharaja Brajendra Singh to integrate the Bharatpur principality with Rajasthan and not with Uttar Pradesh. “My family has a longstanding relationship with the community in Rajasthan,” Mr. Hooda noted.

Mr. Hooda appreciated the work done during the previous Government in the State headed by Mr. Gehlot and asked the Jats not to worry unnecessarily about who would be the next Chief Minister in Rajasthan. Once the party won a majority in the next elections, Congress president Sonia Gandhi would decide on the leader, he said.

Mr. Gehlot said the BJP Government in the State had created a new record of police excesses by firing on innocent people and farmers asking for irrigation water.

The law and order situation in the State had reached a nadir and there was all-round corruption in the Vasundhara Raje Government, he charged.

Mr. Pilot, in whose Lok Sabha constituency Kotputli falls, said it was time to bring Congress back to power. The ordinary people were the worst suffers under the present regime, he charged.

The young MP, who would no more represent the area in future—as Dausa is to be reserved for Scheduled Tribes—said he would continue to work for the people of the constituency, nourished by his late father Rajesh Pilot.

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