Naveen Jindal joins BJP, is party nominee from Kurukshetra

Tribune News Service

Hisar/sonepat, March 24

Minutes after joining the BJP, the saffron party has fielded two new faces — Independent MLA Ranjit Singh from Hisar and former Congress MP Naveen Jindal from Kurukshetra seat — in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

Meanwhile from Rohtak, the BJP has shown confidence in its outgoing MP, Arvind Sharma, for the Lok Sabha elections. But for the Sonepat seat, it has replaced outgoing Sonepat MP Ramesh Kaushik with Mohan Lal Badoli, who is the MLA from Rai constituency.

While Ranjit Singh, who is the son of former Deputy Prime Minister Devi Lal, is a minister in the Haryana Government as he extended support to the BJP after 2019 Assembly elections, Jindal was not active in politics for some time. Jindal announced to quit the Congress while thanking former PM Manmohan Singh moments before joining the BJP.

Ranjit has been serving as the Energy Minister in the Khattar Cabinet and was retained in the Nayab Saini Cabinet again. Singh was first elected to the Haryana Assembly from Rori Assembly segment in 1987 as Lok Dal candidate and served as Agriculture Minister in the Haryana Government till 1990. Afterwards, he served as a Rajya Sabha MP from Haryana (1990-1992).

Naveen Jindal, the industrialist-turned-politician made electoral debut in 2004 on the Congress ticket and retained the seat in 2009.

He suffered defeat in the 2014 General Election and then went into political hibernation. He is chairperson of Jindal Steel Power Limited. His father Om Prakash Jindal had joined politics in 1991 when he became MLA from Haryana Vikas Party of Bansi Lal. He had also been MP from Kurukshetra in 1996 and also won Hisar Assembly seat thrice before his demise in a chopper crash in 2005 when he was minister of the Bhupinder Singh Hooda government.

Though the Congress hasn’t yet announced its candidates for Rohtak and Sonepat seats, Rajya Sabha MP Deepender Hooda has declared himself candidate from the Rohtak LS seat. Deepender lost the 2019 Lok Sabha poll at the hands of Arvind Sharma by a narrow margin of 7,503 votes.

Interestingly, Sharma’s ticket from Rohtak was believed to be confirmed and his supporters had also put up a poster on social media some days ago in which Sharma expressed gratitude to top leaders of the party for nominating him again as a candidate from Rohtak.

In Sonepat, the BJP has dropped outgoing MP Ramesh Kaushik, who won the Sonepat LS seat two times – 2014 and 2019. Kaushik had defeated Congress stalwart Bhupinder Singh Hooda by a margin of over 1.5 lakh votes in 2019.

The saffron party has named Rai MLA, Mohan Lal Badoli, from Sonepat constituency. Badoli is a state general secretary of the party.

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