Revolt in Haryana Congress: Denied ticket, over 12 in fray as independents

Chandigarh: As anticipated, Congress in Haryana suffered a major jolt on Thursday with at least a dozen of its leaders – who were denied party tickets for the upcoming assembly election – filed their nomination as independents on the last day of filing papers.

The 90-member Haryana assembly election is scheduled for October 5 while the results would be out on October 8.

The revolt in Congress erupted during the day minutes after the party released the names of its remaining 49 candidates past midnight in four instalments till early Thursday morning hoping to give  less time for the dissent. But, in its previously released list of 41 candidates a few days ago, it had accommodated all its 31 sitting legislators. Even the party anticipated the dissent given the fact that it had received about 3,000 aspirants for tickets.

The Congress rebels who came out against the party decision to deny them the ticket alleging factionalism and internal bickering included former MLAs Sharda Rathore and Lalit Nagar, former Panchukula Mayor Upender Kaur Ahluwalia and others. Vijay Jain, Jitender Bhardwaj, Satbir Ratera and Chitra Sarwara, Adarshpal Gurjar from Jagadhari seat who quit Congress to join Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and filed papers as an AAP candidate.

The dissidents also included Panipat’s former Congress MLA Rohita Revari who quit party and filed her papers as an independent candidate. Some of the other rebel party leaders who filed their nominations as independent candidates included Ram Kishan Fauji, Neelam Agrawal and Abhijit Singh.

Surprisingly, the Congress which delayed its list till the last day of nomination, stitched an alliance with CPI-M for one seat (Bhiwani) following the collapse of its talks with AAP.

BJP too in fire-fighting mode

Meanwhile, even though the ruling BJP which had 40 MLAs, which had already released its almost entire list of 90 candidates and dropped several of sitting MLAs several days ago, on Thursday continued its damage-control exercise to bring back its dissenting leaders.

The party which has been in power since 2014, was, however, said to have brought in new faces so as to fight anti-incumbency.

According to media reports, it had already brought back one of its senior most leaders and the former BJP state chief Ram Bilas Sharma, Badkhal MLA Seema Trikha, former MLAs Naresh Kaushik and Rao Bahadur Singh and a few others including Lokesh Nagru and brought them back to the party fold.

However, to what extent would the Congress and BJP succeed in placating their dissident leaders, time will tell; the last date of the nomination withdrawal is September 16.