Maneka seeks Karnal, BJP mulls Kurukshetra for her

Aditi Tandon
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, March 11

Union Minister Maneka Gandhi has thrown her hat in the ring for a nomination as the BJP candidate from the Karnal Lok Sabha seat.

The Women and Child Development Minister has asked the BJP leadership to field her from Karnal after she conveyed to the party high command her decision to vacate the Pilibhit parliamentary segment for her son Varun Gandhi.

Varun is currently the sitting MP from Sultanpur and is likely to run from the constituency of his mother.

The other two contenders for the BJP ticket in Karnal – Sanjay Bhatia, an aide of Chief Minister ML Khattar, and Kiran Chopra, wife of sitting BJP member from Karnal Ashwani Chopra – will have a tough time in the face of a nomination request from Maneka, who has ancestral connections in Karnal, where her maternal great grandfather Sardar Datar Singh, a dairy farming pioneer, settled after migrating from Pakistan post-Partition.

But even Maneka is not finding winning the Karnal LS seat nomination easy despite the fact that 800 elected village heads of the Karnal segment have launched a signature campaign to demand the WCD Minister as a candidate from the seat.

It is further learnt that revered spiritual leader of Karnal — Swami Gyananand — is supporting Maneka as a BJP candidate from Karnal.

That said, the BJP is learnt to be considering a proposal to field Maneka from Kurukshetra, where the party does not have a candidate after its sitting MP Raj Kumar Saini quit the party recently. Saini has floated his own outfit.

With the BJP in a dilemma, it remains to be seen whether Maneka prevails on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah to secure the Lok Sabha nomination she wants. BJP sources, meanwhile, say the discussions are still underway.

They are conscious of the fact that sitting MP Ashwani Chopra remained absent from the constituency for most part of his tenure due to poor health and recently he made avoidable positive references to AICC general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra. Chopra is seeking the ticket for his wife Kiran Chopra.