Congress Announces Heavyweights For Haryana Lok Sabha Election: Selja Vs Tanwar In Sirsa, Hooda For Rohtak
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The Congress on Thursday night announced its candidates for eight of Haryana's nine Lok Sabha seats, including former Union Minister Kumari Selja from Sirsa and Rajya Sabha MP Deepender Hooda from Rohtak. Selja will face her former colleague and BJP candidate Ashok Tanwar in the Sirsa-SC Lok Sabha constituency. Selja and Tanwar are both former Haryana Congress chiefs, and the seat is expected to be hotly contested. Selja previously represented the Sirsa-SC constituency. She is currently the Congress' general secretary and in charge of the party's Uttarakhand activities. Divanshu Budhiraja, president of the party's Haryana youth wing, has been fielded for the Karnal seat, where he will face former state chief minister and BJP candidate Manohar Lal Khattar. The Congress has fielded former MP Jai Prakash from the Hisar constituency, denying the ticket to Brijendra Singh, who previously represented the seat as a BJP MP before switching sides a few days ago. Brijendra Singh is the son of former Union Minister Birender Singh, who also rejoined the Congress after a decade with the BJP. Deepender Hooda, the son of former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, will face Arvind Sharma of the BJP for the Rohtak Lok Sabha seat. Deepender has represented the Rohtak parliamentary constituency three times before. The Congress fielded Satpal Brahmachari from Sonipat and Mahendra Pratap from Faridabad. The party's list also includes two sitting MLAs: Varun Choudhary from Ambala-SC and former Haryana minister Rao Dan Singh from Bhiwani-Mahendragarh. Varun Choudhary is the son of Phool Chand Mullana, the former state Congress chief. Shruti Choudhary, a former MP from Bhiwani-Mahendragarh and daughter of senior Congress leader and MLA Kiran Choudhary, was not included in this list. Instead, the party nominated Rao Dan Singh, a B S Hooda loyalist, for the seat. The list includes several loyalists of former Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh. Rival parties, including the ruling BJP, had attacked the Congress for allegedly delaying the announcement of candidates for Haryana's Lok Sabha seats. Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini and other rival party leaders accused the Congress of withdrawing from the contest due to fear of defeat. Some rival leaders also claimed that the Congress was unable to announce candidate names due to infighting within its Haryana unit. On March 24, the party announced the names of its remaining four state candidates. Haryana will vote in the sixth phase of the Lok Sabha election on May 25, with the notification issued on April 29.
The Congress is contesting nine of Haryana's ten Lok Sabha seats. AAP, a member of the opposition INDIA bloc, will run for the Kurukshetra seat. The Congress has yet to announce its candidate for the Gurugram constituency.
On March 13, the ruling BJP named candidates for six Lok Sabha seats in Haryana, three days before the general election was announced.