A former CM, Cong rebel, loyalist’s spouse in BJP’s second LS list

Karnal Lok Sabha constituency comprises nine assembly constituencies including Karnal, Nilokheri, Indri, Gharaunda, Assandh, Panipat (Rural), Panipat (City), Israna and Samalkha. Currently, out of these nine assembly constituencies, BJP holds five and Congress holds four.

Three out of the six candidates declared today are BJP’s incumbent Members of Parliament. These include Rao Inderjit Singh from Gurgaon, Krishan Pal Gurjar from Faridabad and Dharambir Singh from Bhiwani-Mahendragarh.

All three had won with hefty victory margins in 2019 Lok Sabha polls. In Faridabad, Krishan Pal Gurjar got 64.10% of total votes polled and won with a victory margin of over 6.38 lakh votes defeating Congress’ Avtar Singh Bhadana; Rao Inderjit Singh got 67.33% votes and defeated Congress’ stalwart Ajay Singh Yadav in Gurgaon by a margin of over 3.86 lakh votes, and Dharambir got 70.48 per cent of total votes polled in Bhiwani-Mahendragarh and defeated Congress’ Shruti Choudhry by a margin of over 4.44 lakh votes.

In Ambala Lok Sabha constituency also, Rattan Lal Kataria got 71.10 per cent of total votes polled and defeated Congress’ stalwart Kumari Selja by a margin of over 3.42 lakh votes. Rattan Lal Kataria passed away after a prolonged illness in May, 2023. His wife Banto Kataria is now going to contest the same seat of Ambala on a BJP ticket.

From Sirsa Lok Sabha seat, which is a reserved constituency, Congress’ rebel and the former Haryana Pradesh Congress Committee chief Ashok Tanwar has been nominated by the BJP. Tanwar won from Sirsa Lok Sabha as Congress candidate in 2009. But, he lost two consecutive elections from Sirsa Lok Sabha seat. In 2014, he lost to Indian National Lok Dal’s Charanjit Singh Rori and in 2019, he lost to BJP’s Sunita Duggal.

Ahead of the 2019 assembly polls, Tanwar quit Congress. In his four-page resignation from Congress party, Tanwar wrote Congress is going through existential crisis, not because of its political opponents but because of serious internal contradiction. While in Congress, Tanwar was considered an arch rival of Bhupinder Singh Hooda.
After quitting Congress, Tanwar formed his own political outfit Apan Bharat Morcha. In 2021, he joined Trinamool Congress in presence of Mamata Banerjee in New Delhi. He did not last for very long in TMC and switched over to BJP in January, this year.

Sources close to Tanwar say that he joined BJP with a hope that he would be fielded as party’s nominee from Sirsa reserve constituency. Soon after Tanwar’s induction in BJP, Sirsa’s Member of Parliament Sunita Duggal had even lodged a protest with the party high command. She had met BJP’s party affairs in-charge of Haryana Biplab Deb and protested against Tanwar’s induction in the party.

In the list of candidates on six seats released today by the BJP, two incumbent MPs have been replaced. These include Sanjay Bhatia from Karnal and Sunita Duggal from Sirsa. Sanjay Bhatia is likely to be appointed as BJP’s state president of Haryana.

BJP is yet to declare four remaining seats of Haryana. These include Kurukshetra that was represented by Nayab Singh Saini who has now been appointed as Haryana’s chief minister. The three other seats include Rohtak where BJP’s Arvind Kumar Sharma defeated Congress’ Deepender Hooda by a wafer-thin margin of nearly 7,000 votes; Sonipat where BJP’s Ramesh Chander Kaushik defeated Bhupinder Singh Hooda by a margin of over 1.6 lakh votes, and Hisar from where BJP’s member of Parliament Brijendra Singh has recently quit and joined Congress.