CHANDIGARH: With anti-incumbency staring the ruling BJP in the face, the saffron party is set to field new faces in eight out of the 10 Lok Sabha seats in Haryana. Union Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi may be fielded from Karnal this time. She has ancestral connections in Karnal, where her maternal great grandfather Datar Singh, a dairy farming pioneer, settled after migrating from Pakistan post-Partition. She has reportedly conveyed her desire to be contest from there to the party high command.
The BJP is unlikely to field Ashwani Chopra from Karnal again as he had embarrassed the party high command many times by airing his differences publicly. However, according to some sources, the BJP is considering fielding Maneka from Kurukshetra, where the party does not have a candidate after its sitting MP Raj Kumar Saini recently floated his own party, Loktantra Suraksha Party (LSP), which recently entered into an alliance with the BSP.
Riding high on the Narendra Modi wave and banking on non-Jat and urban votes, the BJP had won seven seats in the state in the 2014 parliamentary elections. This time, the party is said is reportedly planning to field new faces from Ambala, Rohtak, Sonepat, Hisar, Sirsa and Bhiwani-Mahendragarh seats, apart from Kurukshetra and Karnal.
Rattan Lal Kataria is unlikely to contest from Ambala again while Dharambir Singh, MP from Bhiwani-Mahendragarh, has announced to contest the Assembly elections. The saffron party may have a tough time selecting candidates for Hisar, Rohtak and Sirsa seats. In 2014, it had left Hisar and Sirsa for its erstwhile ally Haryana Janhit Congress, which has now merged with the Congress. Senior BJP leader Rajiv Jain, said winnability would be the only criteria for the selection of candidates.
Local Backing
Spiritual leader from Karnal Swami Gyananand is said to be supporting Maneka’s candidature from the seat. About 800 sarpanches have also reportedly backed her