CHANDIGARH: The Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) declared eight more names for Lok Sabha elections in Haryana. The saffron party retained the five sitting Member of Parliaments and gave tickets to two new faces.
The list which was released by the saffron party on Saturday includes Sanjay Bhatia from Karnal, a close confidant of Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar. Earlier the sitting MP from here Ashwani Chopra was dropped by the party for openly airing his views against the party in the public.
While former Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer Suneeta Duggal has been given the ticket from Sirsa (SC) seat as she belongs to Dhanak caste, state minister for Mines and Geology Nayab Singh Saini is party candidate from Kurukshetra, as the sitting MP Raj Kumar Saini recently floated his own party, Loktantra Suraksha Party (LSP), which recently entered into an alliance with the BSP.
The party is yet to announce candidates for the Rohtak and Hisar seats.
In the 2014 general elections, BJP contested eight seats out of 10 and left Hisar and Sirsa to its alliance partner at that time, Haryana Janhit Congress (HJC) of Kuldeep Bishnoi which is now merged into Congress.
While sitting MPs from Ambala, Sonepat, Bhiwani-Mahenragarh, Gurugram and Faridabad have been retained and given tickets; Ratan Lal Kataria from Ambala, Ramesh Chandra Kaushik from Sonepat, Unions Minister Rao Inderjeet Singh and Krishan Gurjar from Gurugram and Faridabad respectively and Dharamvir Singh from Bhiwani-Mahendragarh.
The saffron party won seven seats in the state in the last parliamentary elections as it contested eight as it lost the prestigious Rohtak seat to Deepender Hooda of Congress who is the son of former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda.