People have lost faith in the BJP government in Haryana and no one knows who is running it, Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly Bhupinder Singh Hooda said on Friday.
Speaking to The Hindu, the senior Congress leader and former two-time Chief Minister said it is unclear whether the government is being run from Chandigarh or Delhi.
“Every leaf is wounded, every branch is in pain, O garden, tell me, who is your gardener? Is he in Chandigarh or in Delhi? Or does one flower have two gardeners?” he said.
Both Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini and his predecessor Union Urban Affairs Minister Manohar Lal are “busy with event management”, Mr. Hooda said, adding that it is a government of “event management and not performance”.
“This is why we brought a no-confidence motion against the government in the previous session of the Assembly,” the Congress leader said.
He claimed that the State government is not being run by the BJP, but by “criminals, mining mafias, and scammers”. There has been a rise in instances of crime and corruption during the present regime, he alleged.
‘Non-performing govt.’
Terming it a “non-performing” government, Mr. Hooda said the present regime has “failed on all major parameters of development”, be it education, health, infrastructure, or employment.
He claimed that while colleges and universities were set up in every district of Haryana during the decade-long Congress rule, “more than 50% posts of teachers now lie vacant in schools and colleges”. He alleged that hospitals are without doctors and unemployment has trebled since 2014.
“Most of the infrastructure projects implemented during the BJP rule were approved during the Congress regime,” Mr. Hooda claimed. No new big projects or universities came up during the BJP’s over two-decade-long rule, he said.
“Not an inch of metro network has been added to what already existed before the BJP came to power in 2014. From being the No. 1 State in terms of per capita income and investment, Haryana has slipped to No. 14 on NITI Aayog’s Fiscal Health Index. The law and order situation in the State has only deteriorated,” he said.
‘Mandate stolen’
On the BJP winning a third consecutive term in the 2024 Haryana Assembly election, the Congress leader said “the mandate was stolen”.
“Just before the election, the government started issuing ration cards. The population of Haryana is about 2.80 crore, of which 2.13 crore people were declared as belonging to below the poverty line (BPL) families. Haryana suddenly became the poorest State. As per the reply of a Union Minister in the previous session of Parliament, 14 lakh ration cards – the highest in the country – have been cancelled in Haryana. It means about 70 lakh people were given undue benefits for political gains. The government cancelled old-age pension for five lakh beneficiaries. It is a kind of a vote ‘chori (theft)’,” he said.
Mr. Hooda also questioned the role of the Election Commission (EC) in the BJP’s victory, alleging that the “constitutional body has lost its credibility”. “After polling on the night of October 5, the EC announced that the voter turnout was 61.19%. However, a day before the counting of votes, it revised it to 67.90%. The EC is not able to explain this difference of around 7% in the voter turnout. We lost the election by less than one percentage of votes,” he said.
Non-committal on his retirement plans, the 78-year-old leader said the biggest challenge facing the Congress unit in the State is strengthening it at the grassroots level by setting up committees at the block and booth levels. After more than a decade, the State unit had put in place an organisational structure at the district level in August last year as part of the party’s Sangathan Srijan Abhiyan, he said.
“The present government has not taken a single decision of public interest. There are several issues such as unemployment, law and order, and MGNREGA,” Mr. Hooda said.
He added that the party needs to “raise people’s voice and struggle for it”. On the Congress appointing only a single woman district president in Haryana, the former Chief Minister conceded that women should have been given more representation. He said the party would make amends while making future appointments.
On the Indian National Lok Dal’s (INLD) bid to revive its fortunes in the Jat heartland by increasing its presence in Rohtak, his home turf, Mr. Hooda said the regional party posed no challenge to him. He claimed the INLD was the BJP’s “B-team” and people had already seen through them. “They only divided the anti-BJP votes and everyone knew at whose instance they did so,” the Congress leader said, adding that “the INLD’s own leaders have admitted to it”.
Published – January 30, 2026 11:42 pm IST
