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Journalism of Courage
Dharambir Singh, the two-time BJP Lok Sabha MP from Haryana, has sparked off a controversy by terming live-in relationships a “dangerous and harmful disease that is affecting society”, while addressing the House during Zero Hour on Thursday, raising the issue as part of a discussion on matters of urgent public importance. He has already sought a “law to protect Indian culture from becoming like the Western one”.
Before graduating to the Lok Sabha, Singh won the Haryana Assembly elections four times, including thrice on a Congress ticket, and is known across his native Bhiwani as an arch-rival and slayer of three generations of one of the state’s most famous political families — that of former chief minister Bansi Lal. He defeated Lal himself in the 1987 Haryana Assembly polls from Tosham on a Lok Dal ticket, Lal’s son Surender Singh from the same seat in 2000 on a Congress ticket, and Lal’s grand-daughter Shruti Choudhary (daughter of Surender Singh and Kiran Choudhary) in the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha polls, from the Bhiwani-Mahendragarh Lok Sabha constituency.
Easily identifiable in a crowd with his saffron kurtas, Singh wasn’t always a BJP man. Considered one of the key aides of Haryana’s former CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda, he was the third prominent Congress leader — after Rao Inderjit Singh and another close Hooda aide Venod Sharma — who revolted against the party and quit in 2014.
When Hooda took over as Haryana CM for the first time in 2005, Singh was among the first to be appointed Chief Parliamentary Secretary, a post he held from 2005 to 2009. In the 2009 Assembly polls, Singh contested from Sohna and won on a Congress ticket. He was again appointed Chief Parliamentary Secretary by Hooda, a post he held till 2014, during Hooda’s second consecutive CM tenure.
When he expressed his desire to contest the Lok Sabha elections in 2014, he was denied the Congress ticket, as the party wanted to field Kiran Choudhary’s daughter Shruti from the Bhiwani-Mahendragarh seat. In protest, Dharambir resigned from his post and raised a revolt, switching over to the BJP.
Due to his popularity in Bhiwani and neighbouring areas, and his track record of defeating Bansi Lal and his son Surender Singh in the past Assembly polls, the BJP was quick to receive Singh and pitched him from his desired Bhiwani-Mahendragarh constituency in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections against Shruti Choudhary.
In the polls, Singh got 27.45% of the total votes, while Shruti finished third with around 18%. This increased to a dramatic 63% in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, with Shruti getting barely around 25% of the total votes.
