Promised BJP ticket in 2014, she quit IRS

Sushil Manav

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, April 6

Sunita Duggal, BJP candidate from the Sirsa (SC) parliamentary constituency, is a former Indian Revenue Services (IRS) officer. Her husband Rajesh Duggal is an IPS officer in Haryana.

Sunita (51) was working as an Assistant Commissioner of Income Tax when she resigned from the job in 2014, as the BJP had promised her ticket from the Sirsa parliamentary seat. However, the day her resignation was accepted, the BJP gave the Sirsa seat to its alliance partner Kuldeep Bishnoi’s Haryana Janhit Congress in exchange of the Karnal seat. Bishnoi fielded former MP Dr Sushil Indora and Duggal was left high and dry.

Even for the 2014 Assembly elections, the BJP had first assured her the ticket from the Pataudi (SC) seat. She campaigned in the constituency for nearly a month, but Bimla Chaudhary, a confidante of Union minister Rao Inderjit Singh, was given the ticket. Duggal was eventually asked to contest the Assembly elections from the Ratia seat, considered a stronghold of the Chautala clan. She fought valiantly, but lost to INLD candidate Ravinder Baliala by a narrow margin of 453 votes.

However, she never lost contact with the electorate in the Sirsa constituency in general and the Ratia Assembly seat, a part of the Sirsa parliamentary seat, in particular.

In December 2015, Sunita was named the Chairperson of the Haryana Scheduled Castes Finance and Development Corporation, but her visits to various Assembly segments of Sirsa continued uninterrupted.

Though the BJP had been discussing several names for the Sirsa (SC) seat, including those of singer Hans Raj Hans, former IPS officer of Haryana cadre from Tamil Nadu V Kamraja and Dalbir Kaur, sister of Sarabjit Singh who died in a Pakistan jail in 2013, but Sunita was always considered the most effective candidate.

With her nomination, the election for the Sirsa parliamentary seat will become an absorbing contest, as state Congress president Ashok Tanwar is tipped to contest from there. Also, the INLD and the JJP will field their candidates this time on the seat, considered a stronghold of the Chautalas.

Ally Bishnoi’s HJC got Sirsa seat

• Sunita Duggal (51) was working as an Assistant Commissioner of Income Tax when she resigned from the job in 2014, as the BJP had promised her ticket from the Sirsa parliamentary seat
• However, the day her resignation was accepted, the BJP gave the Sirsa seat to its alliance partner Kuldeep Bishnoi’s Haryana Janhit Congress in exchange of the Karnal seat. Bishnoi fielded former MP Dr Sushil Indora and Duggal was left high and dry