Soon after a two-time Congress MP from Haryana’s Kurukshetra and well-known industrialist Naveen Jindal (54) and Haryana cabinet minister Ranjit Singh Chautala (78), an independent MLA, joined Bhartiya Janata Party, the saffron party fielded them from Kurukshetra and Hisar respectively for the upcoming parliamentary polls. The party has again fielded its sitting MP from Rohtak. However, it has dropped its sitting MP from Sonipat Ramesh Kaushik while fielding a sitting MLA Mohan Lal Badoli from the seat. With the latest list of four candidates for Haryana, the party has declared candidates for all ten parliamentary constituencies from the state. Earlier, Naveen Jindal joined the saffron party while quitting Congress. He is the youngest child of former Haryana minister Savitri Jindal, one among the richest women of India, and late Om Prakash Jindal, who was also a minister in Haryana. An independent MLA, Ranjit Singh Chautala is son of former Deputy Prime Minister Devi Lal and brother of former Haryana Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala. In the Khattar-led BJP-JJP alliance government, he was looking after power and jails departments. The BJP replaced its Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar with Nayab Singh Saini on March 12 while snapping its ties with the JJP of the then deputy chief minister Dushyant Chautala. Ranjit Singh was again inducted into the cabinet and was given the same portfolios in the Saini government. Ranjit had contested the 2019 Assembly election as an independent candidate from Rania constituency of Sirsa district after allegedly being “ignored by the Congress because of internal politics despite his long association with the grand old party”. He had announced support to the BJP even when the counting of the votes was still on and it appeared that the saffron party BJP may fall short of majority mark in the 90-member Assembly. The BJP’s choice for Sonipat, Mohan Lal Badoli is an MLA from Rai constituency of Sonipat. He is closely associated with RSS for the past over three decades. In Badoli, the BJP had won the Rai seat for the first time which has been considered a stronghold of Congress. A sitting MP Ramesh Kaushik, who has been dropped from Sonipat, was earlier with Congress. He had joined the Congress in 2013 and was fielded from this seat for 2014 Lok Sabha elections. He was elected from this seat in 2014 and 2019. The BJP has again fielded its sitting MP from Rohtak, Arvind Sharma. Sharma had defeated former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda’s son Deepender Singh Hooda from Rohtak in 2019 by a thin margin in a closely contested election. In Kurukshetra, Naveen Jindal will be taking on AAP candidate and former Rajya Sabha MP Sushil Gupta. The AAP is contesting the upcoming Lok Sabha elections in Haryana in an alliance with Congress and has been given one seat (Kurukshetra) out of ten constituencies in the state.
