Haryana: CM Saini mulls legal options as Congress delay in picking LoP stalls key appointments

Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini. (File: PTI)

The inability of the faction-ridden Congress party to choose a Leader of Opposition in the Haryana Assembly is delaying key government appointments where the LoP is part of the selection panel, with the Nayab Singh Saini government mulling legal options to resolve the stalemate.

According to a report in The Indian Express, the Saini government, which came to power in Haryana, winning 48 of the 90 seats in the state, is considering to seek legal opinion on how it could ‘bypass’ the requirement of a Leader of the Opposition in panels for selection to several posts, given the Congress’s failure to appoint one more than six months after the government was formed.

Ridden by factionalism, the Haryana unit of the Congress party, which managed to win only 37 seats in the Assembly polls last year, has failed to arrive at a consensus on its pick as the leader of its legislature party in the state who would then assume the role of the LoP in the Assembly.

"We are going to take legal opinion from the Advocate General to see how we can go ahead with the appointments that are stuck due to the absence of an LoP," CM Saini told the media during an interaction last week.

"It is for the Congress to decide whom they want to appoint as their CLP leader. But, the government has to go ahead with its appointments. Whatever can be done legally, the government shall do," Haryana BJP chief Mohan Lal Badoli said.

Sources in the Congress party said that there was no final word yet on the LoP while some reports suggest that the decision could still be at least a few weeks away.

Among the selection panels where the LoP is part include those for appointments to the posts of Chief Information Commissioner as well as 10 Information Commissioners. The State Information Commission is currently functioning with three members with the pending appeals and complaints under the RTI mounting to over 7,200.

The Congress, however, maintains that the absence of the LoP does not bar the government from holding selection committee meetings and that the government could choose to hold such a meeting with any senior member of the opposition.

Notably, a similar situation arose in Jharkhand where the JMM-led government of the INDIA bloc moved the Supreme Court over the opposition BJP's failure to pick an LoP. The BJP appointed Babulal Marandi as its LoP in March following the SC's intervention in January this year, directing the BJP to appoint an LoP in two weeks.

The court's directions came while hearing a petition regarding the delay in the appointment of CIC and ICs in the state. The state government, in its response, had cited the absence of the LoP as the reason behind the delay in the appointments.