As BJP shifts ‘reluctant’ Haryana CM to new seat, it may not be easy going for Nayab Saini

However, Ladwa is unlikely to be easy going for Saini.

In 2014, Saini had successfully contested the Naraingarh Assembly seat and, five years later, won from the Kurukshetra Lok Sabha seat by a huge margin of over 6.8 lakh votes.

Five months ago, ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, he won from the Karnal Assembly seat after the party named him as the replacement for Manohar Lal Khattar as CM, defeating the Congress’s Tarlochan Singh comfortably by 41,540 votes. In the 2019 Assembly polls, Khattar had won from the Karnal seat.

BJP sources said that Saini wanted to stick to Karnal, but was shifted to Ladwa as some of Khattar’s close aides were keen to contest from here. The Karnal ticket finally went to Jagmohan Anand, Khattar’s former media coordinator and ex-Karnal district president.

The Ladwa constituency came into existence in 2007 and two years later, Sher Singh Barshami of the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) became its first MLA. However, he was convicted along with party supremo Om Prakash Chautala in the teachers’ recruitment scam. In the election that followed, in 2014, the BJP’s Pawan Saini defeated the INLD’s Bachan Kaur, Barshami’s wife, by 2,922 votes, but lost the seat to the Congress’s Mewa Singh in 2019 by 12,637 votes.

Saini could face a challenge from many quarters. One, the INLD has fielded its old face Barshami from Ladwa. The incumbent CM could also face a Congress-Aam Aadmi Party joint candidate as the two parties are in alliance talks. The Congress had left the Kurukshetra seat to the AAP in the Lok Sabha polls, and its candidate Sushil Gupta had secured 40.91% of the votes in Ladwa – making it one of the four Assembly segments that the AAP led in across the state. The AAP could field Gupta again if it contests the Assembly seat.

The Congress and Dushyant Chautala’s Jannayak Janta Party (JJP) have taken jibes at Saini for the frequent change in his constituencies. While the JJP chief called him a “kati patang (kite with no strings)”, the Congress has said the CM “does not have the courage to contest from Karnal”. “He also cannot go back to his earlier seat of Naraingarh and chose Ladwa thinking it is a safe seat. He will not be able to succeed there as well,” a statement issued by the Congress said.

According to the 2011 Census, SCs comprise 22.6% of Ladwa’s population, with a significant chunk, 7.4%, from the Saini community. The constituency is largely rural, with only 11.78% of the population in urban areas.