The main opposition party Congress in Haryana, has finally announced candidates for 8 parliamentary seats remaining undecided on Gurugram Lok Sabha as Bhupender Singh Hooda and leaders of the opposite faction namely Kumari Selja, Randeep Surjewala and Kiran Chaudhary known SRK faction are at loggerheads over the issue lobbying for the ticket of their supporters. Hooda’s unilateral hold and domination in the party in Haryana is evident from the ticket distribution as 7 of the 8 declared candidates are confident and loyal to Hooda. Thus, Hooda’s opponents within the Congress party struggling for political existence, especially Kumari Shailja Randeep Surjewala and Kiran Choudhary, have suffered a major setback. Distributing tickets to Hooda supporters was a big blow to the SRK faction ahead of Lok Sabha polls. Keeping in view the political stature of Hooda, the party’s high command, supreme authority to take calls about any matter, refrained from giving tickets to the leaders close to the SRK faction. It is pertinent to mention that the remaining one seat, Gurugram seat, is still locked between actor Raj Babbar and former Finance Minister Captain Ajay Singh Yadav. Here too, Hooda is lobbying hard for Raj Babbar. It is clearly visible from the ticket distribution that Hooda’s opposition camp SRK and Brijendra Singh, son of Birendra Singh, who recently left BJP and joined Congress, were disappointed. Kumari Selja is the only leader from the SRK faction who succeeded in getting the ticket. . Political experts opine that by showcasing his strength through ticket distribution in Lok Sabha seats, Hooda has made it clear that he is mostly likely to dominate the ticket distribution in assembly polls too.
Out of total ten Lok Sabha seats in Haryana, Congress is contesting on 9 seats and Aam Aadmi Party is contesting on one seat. In this way, Congress has declared candidates for 8 out of 9 seats of its quota on Thursday. Deependra Hooda, a Rajya Sabha MP and son of Bhupender Singh Hooda has been fielded from Rohtak. Mullana MLA Varun Chaudhary from Mulana, former Union Minister Kumari Shailja from Sirsa, former MP Jaiprakash a close one to Hooda from Hisar seat, Youth Congress President Divyanshu Budhiraja from Karnal seat, Satpal Brahmachari from Sonipat seat, Rao Dan Singh from Bhiwani-Mahendragarh and former. Cabinet minister Mahendra Pratap Singh from Faridabad Lok Sabha seat. It is worth mentioning that excluding Kumar Selja, the remaining 7 candidates are in the good books of the Hooda.
It is noteworthy that following the feud among Hooda and SRK group, the party high command could not reach any conclusion regarding the candidature for Gurugram Lok Sabha seat. The Hooda faction is lobbying for film actor Raj Babbar. Apart from Raj Babbar, Rao Dan Singh, Jitendra Bhardwaj and Chaudhary Aftab Ahmed were in fray for the ticket from Hooda group. After Raj Babbar’s name surfaced, former Irrigation Minister Captain Ajay Yadav started lobbying for the ticket staking his claim. Earlier, he had clearly refused that he would not contest the elections, but with the arrival of Raj Babbar, he felt that in the future, his and his MLA son Chiranjeev Rao’s chances of getting a Congress ticket could be blurred. .He protested vociferously, due to which the Congress high command had to keep the Gurugram Lok Sabha seat pending.
It is clear from the list of Lok Sabha candidates released by Congress in Haryana that the party has entirely taken caste equations in consideration to take political mileage while finalizing the ticket. Since Ambala and Sirsa Lok Sabha seats are reserved for candidates hailing from SC community Ambala, the party has fielded SC candidates Varun Chaudhary and former party president and Congress General Secretary Kumari Selja from the these seats. Youth Congress president Divyanshu Budhiraja has been fielded against the BJP candidate and former Chief Minister Manohar Lal hails from the Punjabi community as Manohar Lal is also from Punjabi (Khatri) community. At the same time, the party has also given tickets to two candidates belonging to the OBC community, including Mahendra Pratap Singh Gurjar from Faridabad and Rao Dan Singh Ahir from Bhiwani-Mahendragarh. Whereas the party has given tickets to Brahmin candidate Satpal Brahmchari from Sonipat seat in a bid to woo voters from the community.
Notably, the party had conducted several surveys before giving tickets and more than 300 candidates who were seeking tickets for 10 Lok Sabha seats had applied. When the screening committee of Haryana had handed over the panel of names to the high command, the final survey was conducted by the party in April. This became the basis of the tickets.