BJP yet to pick candidates in Haryana, list likely by weekend

GURUGRAM: BJP’s list of candidates in Haryana for the forthcoming

Lok Sabha elections

is likely to be out this weekend. While the names have been more or less finalised for four of the 10 seats, the party is finding it difficult to get “suitable” candidates for the remaining six.


They include Rohtak, where the party faces an uphill task. The two seats for which the candidatures are confirmed are Gurgaon and Faridabad, where the incumbents will be repeated.

Fearing anti-incumbency, the party intends to replace all other candidates who contested on the lotus symbol in 2014.

In 2014, BJP contested in eight of the 10 seats, with alliance partner Kuldeep Bishnoi-led Haryana Janhit Congress (HJC) in the other two. It won seven, but lost Roh-tak to Congress, while HCJ lost both their seats — Hisar and Sirsa, which were won by INLD.

“The party leadership has decided that only two of its seven MPs will be retained. In fact our MP from Kurukshetra has already left BJP to found his own party. So while announcing the names of Rao Inderjit from Gurgaon and Krishan Pal Gurjar from Faridabad is a mere formality, the party is finding it hard to finalise names of candidates from the remaining eight. There are several claimants and the party needs to keep caste equations in mind before finalising names. The list is likely to be out this weekend,” said a party leader.

Sources said with BJP announcing that Maneka Gandhi will contest from Sultanpur in UP, the choice for Karnal has narrowed down.

Earlier, there were speculations that she might contest from Karnal.

“The two main contenders from Karnal now are the general secretary of Haryana BJP Sanjay Bhatia, who is trusted by chief minister M L Khattar, and former Congress MP Arvind Sharma, who joined BJP only a few days ago. In case Sharma is not given the ticket from Karnal, the party might field him from Rohtak or Sonipat. Haryana urban local bodies minister Kavita Jain and her husband, the chief minister’s media adviser Rajiv Jain, are both vying for the Sonipat ticket,” a source said.

CM Khattar, defence minister Nirmala Sitaraman and BJP state president Subhash Barala will be in Gurgaon to preside over a social media volunteers meet on Sunday (March 31).

“This meet is primarily for those people who want to volunteer as social media activists for the party. It will be attended by BJP’s national IT cell head Amit Malviya and Rajiv Babbar, who is in charge of IT and social media campaign in Haryana,” said BJP state spokesperson Raman Malik.