JJP fields Digvijay from Sonipat against Bhupinder Singh Hooda

CHANDIGARH: Jannayak Janata Party (

JJP

) leader and Hisar MP Dushyant Chautala on Monday fielded his younger brother Digvijay

from Sonipat

against former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and sitting BJP MP Ramesh Kaushik.



The party also nominated Jai Bhagwan Sharma from Kurukshetra and Mahmood Khan from Gurugram. Sharma, a former member of BJP’s state executive body, had joined JJP after Dushyant parted ways with the INLD. Khan, according to a JJP spokesperson, gave up high-flying corporate career in London to return to his roots in rural Mewat. Khan has worked as the global leader of innovation process development at Unilever. He is the only Muslim candidate in Gurugram, which has a sizeable number of Meo-Muslim votes.

With this, all the 10 candidates of JJP and its alliance partner Aam Aadmi Party have been declared. The JJP is contesting seven seats and AAP the remaining three, as per their agreement.

The candidature of Digvijay, who lost the Jind assembly bypoll in January, in Jat-dominated Sonipat has made the contest interesting, especially as both he and Hooda Senior belong to the Jat community. Nine assembly seats under the Sonipat constituency are Ganaur, Rai, Kharkhoda, Sonipat, Gohana, Baroda, Julana, Safidon and Jind. Four of these seats are dominated by Jat voters and two have almost equal number of Jat and non-Jat voters.

In Sonipat, Hooda would bank on the work he has done in this area during 10 years as the chief minister. His wife Asha Hooda is from Matindu village and belongs to Dahiya Gotra, which has significant presence in Sonipat constituency. Hooda is from Deswali belt and Sonipat being the epicentre of Deswali belt, would help Hooda to get support. However,

Digvijay

is from Bagri belt.

On the other hand, Digvijay is confident of getting votes from a major portion of Jind district, which comes under Sonipat parliamentary constituency. Although Digvijay had lost the Jind byelection, he managed to get a good share of votes. The Jind byelection also established him in the state’s politics because he scored more votes than senior Congress leader and head of Congress party’s communication cell Randeep Surjewala.

As a large number of voters residing in Sonipat work in Delhi, the JJP is hoping to get their support with help of his party’s alliance partner AAP, which has influence in Delhi.

The BJP candidate and sitting MP, Ramesh Kaushik is mainly riding on the Modi wave and hopes to get support of non-Jat votes with two strong leaders from Jat community in the fray against him.