CHANDIGARH: As the Assembly elections draw near, distribution of party tickets turns out to be a big headache for various parties in Haryana. Move over Union ministers, sitting Members of Parliament and senior leaders who want tickets for their kin, socio-political organisations threaten to boycott the elections if their candidates are not nominated.
The Haryana Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee ad hoc committee (HSGMC) has demanded 15 Assembly seats from the Congress.
According to sources, in a recent meeting in Karnal, Sikh organisations supporting the HSGMC demanded tickets for 15 seats, seeking adequate representation of Sikhs in the Assembly. HSGMC president Jagdish Singh Jhinda, however, said the committee did not demand tickets for Sikhs. “We support the Congress in the forthcoming elections. It is for the party to decide to give us tickets or not.”
Also the Punjabi community under the aegis of Shiromani Akhil Bharatiya Punjabi Jagriti Manch has asked for 25 tickets. The community is influential in assembly segments such as Panchkula, Kalka, Ambala (City), Ambala (Cantonment), Karnal, Kurukshetra, Rohtak, Panipat, Sirsa, Bhewa, Hisar, Ratia, Fatehabad, Gurgaon, Hansi, Bhiwani, Tohana, Faridabad and a few others. “The Punjabi community should be given tickets as they deserve it,” said Manch president and former state home minister Subhash Batra, who recently joined the Haryana Janhit Congress and was made chairperson of the party’s campaign committee. “The party is yet to decide the tickets and will accordingly announce them. I hope for the best,” he said.
The highest-ever number of MLAs with Punjabi background ever elected to the Haryana Assembly was 17 in 1987. The second highest number of Punjabis elected was 14 in 1991. Subsequently, 11 of them got berth in the council of ministers headed by Bhajan Lal.
Moreover, Brahmins have also threatened to boycott the elections if they are not given adequate representation in distribution of tickets by political parties, mainly the ruling Congress. Their leaders under Kandela Khap have decided this in a recent meeting. The Brahmin community constitutes 10 per cent in the total population of the state, and at present in the assembly of 90 seats, it has six MLAs; in the past at one time it had 16 MLAs. The prominent leaders from the community are Assembly speaker and Congress leader Kuldeep Sharma and Jan Chetna Party chief Vinod Sharma. Tek Ram, a prominent face of the community, had joined the Congress some time back.
“We will support candidates of various political parties but they should be from our community. We will work to mobilise support for them,” said Raghbir Bharadwaj, a Brahmin leader.
The more dominant a caste, the higher is its share in power. Haryana, for instance, had 13 governments led by a Jat chief minister of the total 20 because Jats account for 25 per cent of the state’s electorate. Catering to non-Jat voters helped form the other seven governments. While the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) banks mainly on the Jat vote, the Congress vote bank includes Jats, non-Jats, Dalits, Brahmins and Punjabis among others. The BJP is banking on traders and urban voters.
There is a beeline for tickets in the BJP but the saffron party will only finalise the list after Prime Minister Narendra Modi puts his final stamp. Veteran Congress leader Birender Singh who joined the BJP recently has suggested names of his supporters for 33 seats.
The state unit of the party has already sent the names to the central election committee of the party. The party leaders have also interviewed ticket aspirants. This apart, the party has hired an agency which is doing background checks on ticket aspirants and winnable candidates. The old-timers, however, feel they should be preferred and the newcomers think they can’t be treated as outsiders.
Further complicating the matter is the demand of tickets by a few senior leaders and MPs for their kin. Sources said that External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj wants ticket for her sister Vandana from Safidon; Union Minister of State Rao Inderjit Singh wants her daughter Aarti Rao to be nominated from Rewari; Union minister Krishanpal Gujjar wants his son Devender Singh in the fray from Tigaon; Banto Kataria, wife of Ambala MP Rattan Lal Kataria, wants to contest from Nilokheri; Union minister of state Gen V K Singh’s brother-in-law
Aridaman Singh wants a ticket from Sohna; and Karnal MP Ashwani Chopra’s wife Kiran Chopra wants to contest from Karnal. And the list is endless.
The ruling Congress has received total 1,212 applications for the 90 seats while it got around 8,000 applications in 2009. Haryana Congress President Ashok Tanwar does not want to give tickets to tainted persons while another eight MLAs do not want to fight elections, said sources.
Only INLD has declared around 73 candidates.