ALL THE sitting MPs of the BJP from Haryana as well as several of its stalwarts who lost the 2019 Assembly polls are among the names put forward by the state leadership for the coming Lok Sabha elections.
The state BJP held a meeting in New Delhi Thursday, ahead of the party’s Central Election Committee meeting, where a panel of contestants for Haryana’s 10 Lok Sabha seats was decided.
In 2019, the BJP had won all the 10 seats. But the Ambala seat is vacant after the death of Rattan Lal Kataria in May 2023.
Sources said that at the meeting, a decision was also taken that the BJP should contest the Lok Sabha polls alone, and not in alliance with the Dushyant Chautala-led Jannayak Janta Party (JJP), the party’s partner in the state government.
There has been uncertainty over whether the two parties, which came together after the 2019 Assembly results left the BJP short of a majority, would have a pre-poll alliance.
Asked about the BJP’s decision, Dushyant Chautala told reporters in Chandigarh: “It (the alliance) is not for me or anybody else to decide. The final decision shall be taken at a meeting of the NDA.” Later, the JJP announced a meeting of the party in Karnal on March 3 to decide its course of action for the Lok Sabha polls.
For the BJP, the dilemma is whether to go with its sitting MPs or field new faces, with the final decision to be taken by the party high command.
Thursday’s meeting was chaired by Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, BJP state in-charge Biplab Deb and state chief Nayab Saini, and was attended by top leaders, including Birender Singh, Capt Abhimanyu, and former state chiefs Om Prakash Dhankar and Subhash Barala.
The nine sitting MPs whose names were shortlisted at the meeting include Saini himself (the Kurukshetra MP), Krishan Pal Gujjar (Faridabad), Rao Inderjit (Gurgaon), Sunita Duggal (Sirsa), Arvind Sharma (Rohtak), Sanjeev Bhatia (Karnal), Ramesh Kaushik (Sonipat), Brijendra Singh (Hisar), and Dharambir (Bhiwani-Mahendragarh). Besides, the meeting suggested the name of Banto Kataria, the wife of the late MP Kataria.
The panel of shortlisted contestants also includes Capt Abhimanyu, who lost to the JJP’s Ram Kumar Gautam from the Narnaund Assembly seat in 2019. Two leaders who joined the BJP from the Congress, ex-Hisar MP Kuldeep Bishnoi and Ashok Tanwar, also figure in the list. While Bishnoi (who may be fielded from Hisar) has been a frequent traveller between parties as well, Tanwar’s party-hopping from the Congress to the Trinamool Congress to the Aam Aadmi Party to finally the BJP is of more recent vintage. He is seen as a contender from the Sirsa seat.
Apart from Ambala, Sirsa is the only other reserved Lok Sabha constituency in Haryana. Tanwar had represented Sirsa in 2009 as a Congress candidate.
Other names in the list are former BJP state chief and ex-minister Om Prakash Dhankar, who is currently the national secretary of the party and a contender from Rohtak; and Olympian Yogeshwar Dutt, who lost the 2019 Assembly elections from Baroda, and could not win the bypoll to the seat either. He could be considered for the Sonipat Lok Sabha seat.
Dutt lost to the Congress’s Krishan Hooda in the 2019 Assembly polls. In the bypoll necessitated due to Hooda’s death, he lost to a fresh Congress face, Indu Raj Narwal.
Dutt will face tough competition for the Sonipat ticket from BJP leader Mohan Lal Badoli, who currently represents the Rai Assembly seat (which is part of the Sonipat Lok Sabha constituency) and is keen on contesting the parliamentary polls.
Former Haryana minister Vipul Goyal is also among the contenders for a Lok Sabha ticket, from Faridabad. While he had won from Faridabad in the 2014 Assembly polls and became the Industries Minister in the BJP government, he had not been fielded by the party in 2019 for either the Assembly or Lok Sabha elections.
Talking about the list of probable candidates prepared by them, Capt Abhimanyu said after the meeting: “In 2019, the people of Haryana had gifted 10 lotus flowers (the BJP’s symbol) to Shri Narendra Modi. The same shall be repeated this time. The BJP, as people say, always stays in election mode. Each and every party worker, leader, everybody, is working round the clock to ensure that the BJP achieves its target of 370+ and the NDA gets 400+ seats in the coming polls.”
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