With just one day left for elections for two Rajya Sabha seats from Haryana, independent candidate Kartikeya Sharma is giving sleepless nights to the Congress Party and its parachute candidate Ajay Maken. iTV founder Sharma is being backed by the BJP and its ally Jannayak Janta Party (JJP). The RS polls are due to take place on June 10.
Upset over Sharma getting an upper hand against their candidate, the party has moved all Congress legislators to Chhattisgarh to avoid cross-voting on the D-Day. They would be brought back to Chandigarh on polling day. The Congress move has come for a dig from the BJP leadership. Speaking to The Daily Guardian Review, a senior leader of BJP said, “It is apparent from the Congress move that the party cannot hold its flock together and fearing cross-voting it has shifted its legislators to Raipur.”
Contrary to the Congress move, the BJP has decided to hold a one-day training camp at Sukhvilla Oberoi, a five-star facility in Mohali. All legislators from both BJP and its alliance partner JJP, along with Independent
MLAs, who have decided to support Sharma’s candidacy to RS, apart from the BJP’s own candidate Krishan Lal Panwar, reached the hotel for their two-day stay on Wednesday. The Congress leadership tried to project the move as BJP being afraid of allowing their legislators to move about freely and preferred to bring the entire flock to the hotel.
Refuting the Congress claims, OP Dhankar, state BJP president said, “Unlike Congress, the BJP has decided to come up with one-day training camp in order to train our legislators about the voting procedures and other aspects of Rajya Sabha elections, as newly elected MLAs are not familiar with them.”
The BJP might invite some retired election commission officials and experts in order to get the party legislators familiar with the voting process. Chief Minister Manohar Lal, Deputy Chief Minister Dushyant Chautala and Dhankar will be present during the training camp, along with other senior office bearers of the party.