106 Congmen seek tickets from 4 Ambala segments

Nitish Sharma

Tribune News Service

Ambala, August 19

As many as 106 aspirants have applied for Congress tickets for the four Assembly segments in Ambala district for the upcoming elections.

A maximum of 46 applications have been received from Mullana (reserved) Assembly segment which fell vacant after the sitting MLA Varun Chaudhry got elected as Ambala MP in the recently concluded Lok Sabha election.

After Mullana, 37 applications have been received for Ambala City, followed by 14 for Ambala Cantonment and nine for Naraingarh. At present, the Ambala City and Ambala Cantonment have BJP MLAs, while Naraingarh has a Congress MLA.

Former and sitting MLAs, businessmen, advocates and municipal councillors are among those who have applied for the party tickets.

From Ambala City, former minister Nirmal Singh, former MLA Jasbir Mallour, former Youth Congress leader Himmat Singh, former Haryana Pradesh Congress committee treasurer Rohit Jain, AICC secretary Chetan Chauhan, Deputy Mayor Rajesh Mehta, municipal councillor Mithun Verma, Pawan Aggarwal, and Balvinder Singh are among those who are seeking the party ticket.

In Ambala Cantonment, Chitra Sarwara, Parvinder Singh, Venu Agarwal, Ashok Jain, Sudhir Jaiswal, Atul Mahajan, and Karan Kumar are among those who have applied for the party ticket. In the previous Assembly election, Chitra Sarwara had contested the election as an independent candidate and was runner up against BJP’s senior leader Anil Vij.

In Naraingarh, sitting MLA Shalley Chaudhary, former MP Kailasho Saini, former state information commissioner Ashok Mehta, Former Senior Deputy Advocate General Haryana Sukhwinder Singh Nara and Dhoom Singh are among the ticket seekers from the Congress.

Similarly, in the Mullana Assembly segment, Janak Singh, Swaran Singh, former zila parishad Chairperson Pinki Gola, Dr Mehtab Singh, advocate Ashwani Nagra and Jagmal Singh are among the aspirants for the Congress ticket.

Sources in the Congress said since the seat of the Mullana Assembly was vacant, a number of aspirants from neighbouring constituencies and districts had applied for the ticket of the Mullana Assembly constituency and that was the prime reason behind higher number of applications. Senior Congress leaders Phool Chand Mullana and his son Varun Chaudhry have contested for the Mullana seat for the Congress on previous occasions. The party may take a call regarding the candidature for Mullana soon.

Meanwhile, Ambala MP Varun Chaudhry, said, “A large number of applications have been received for the party tickets not only in Ambala, but across the state. It shows that there is a strong wave in favour of the Congress and people are excited to contest the election as they know that the Congress party is going to form the next government in Haryana.”