CHANDIGARH: In the dusty lanes of Danoda village in Jind district, where the remnants of Haryana’s political rivalries still linger in the air, a new chapter in the state’s turbulent political saga began on October 5.
The ex-BJP MP Brijendra Singh, flanked by his father – the veteran Congress stalwart and former Union Minister Birender Singh – flagged off the ‘Sadbhav Yatra’, a 2,600-km foot march inspired by Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra.
The yatra’s launch, tellingly, unfolded without the presence of Haryana Congress president Rao Narender Singh or former chief minister and Congress Legislative Party leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda himself – a glaring omission that underscores the deepening fissures within the grand old party’s Haryana unit.
The former IAS officer was accompanied by the Congress MP from Rajasthan’s Churu Rahul Kaswan and Kaithal MLA Aditya Surjewala along with other local Congress leaders. Even, some Congress leaders, including Hisar MP Jai Prakash, described it as a personal yatra of Brijendra Singh.
Described as a crusade for social harmony across Haryana’s 36 biradaris (communities), the six-month odyssey across all 90 assembly constituencies is far from a mere goodwill trek.
The political observers term it a calculated bid to resurrect a political dynasty, consolidate Jat influence, and lob a direct challenge at the unyielding throne of Hooda, the former Chief Minister who clings to his perch as Congress Legislative Party (CLP) leader despite the party’s third consecutive electoral drubbing.
“This is not just a march; it’s a people’s mission to restore bhaichara (brotherhood) and counter the BJP’s divisive politics,” Brijendra thundered to a crowd of farmers and party workers, his voice laced with the fervor of a man reclaiming lost ground.
Yet, beneath the rhetoric of unity lies a sharper edge: Brijendra, the great-grandson of Sir Chhotu Ram – the pre-Independence peasant icon whose Unionist Party reforms shielded Haryana’s farmers from exploitative moneylenders – is positioning himself as the true heir to that legacy, aiming to eclipse Hooda as the paramount Jat voice in a state where caste arithmetic reigns supreme.
Haryana’s politics, long a tinderbox of Jat dominance and non-Jat backlash, has been Hooda territory for over a decade. The septuagenarian ex-CM, who steered Congress to power in 2005 and 2009, has masterfully consolidated the party’s 37 MLAs post the October 2024 assembly polls, securing his CLP leadership in a high-command nod that sidelined rivals like Sirsa MP Kumari Selja.
Critics within the party whisper of a “Hooda highway” – where tickets, alliances, and narratives bend to his will. In the 2024 polls, Hooda’s camp bagged 72 of Congress’s 90 candidates, a dominance that propelled the party to a near-majority (37 seats) but fell agonizingly short against a resurgent BJP’s 48.
Birender Singh, Brijendra’s father and Hooda’s long-time bete noire, didn’t mince words in February 2025: “For 15 years, Haryana Congress has been Hooda-centric. If the party wants to survive, it must move beyond him.”
The elder Singh, a five-time MLA from Uchana Kalan and grandson of Chhotu Ram through his daughter Bagwani Devi, had bolted to the BJP in 2014 amid a bitter feud with Hooda, who allegedly blocked his path to the Union Cabinet.
Ahead of assembly elections in 2024, their dramatic return to Congress – Brijendra first in March, Birender in April – was hailed as a Jat consolidation coup, but the high command’s ticket snubs soured the homecoming. Brijendra’s foray into the fray crystallized this rift. In the 2024 assembly elections, he staked claim to Uchana Kalan – the family’s bastion, where Birender won five times (1977–2009) and his wife Premlata held sway from 2014–19.
Rooted in Jind’s Bangar belt, this Jat-heavy seat symbolizes the Singh clan’s agrarian ethos, echoing Chhotu Ram’s 1930s battles for debt relief and regulated markets that birthed Haryana’s cooperative ethos.
Brijendra, a 1998-batch Haryana cadre IAS officer who voluntarily retired in 2019 to win Hisar Lok Sabha on a BJP ticket (defeating JJP’s Dushyant Chautala by over 200,000 votes), eyed a triumphant Congress debut.
But he lost to BJP’s Devender Chatar Attri by a razor-thin 32 votes – 48,936 to 48,968 – in a contest that saw JJP’s Dushyant Chautala slump to fifth.
The margin fueled whispers of “vote chori” (electoral malpractice) – a grievance Brijendra now amplifies on the yatra, alongside farmer distress, unemployment, and the Agnipath scheme’s fallout.
Brijendra publicly blamed “internal politics” for Congress denying him the Hisar Lok Sabha ticket in 2024, favoring Hooda loyalist Jai Prakash instead.
The yatra’s political calculus is audacious by invoking Chhotu Ram’s mantle – Brijendra seeks to peel away Jat loyalty from Hooda, whose 2024 poll near-miss drew flak for “monopolizing” tickets and ignoring public sentiment stoked by BJP’s non-Jat CMs.
“Haryana needs bhaichara more than ever,” Brijendra says, targeting the BJP.
