How Hooda Jr’s selection proved a gamechanger

Sushil Manav

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 13

With the BJP and Congress set to win one Rajya Sabha seat each from the two going to biennial polls and the ruling party candidate set to be elected unopposed from the seat having a bypoll, Deepender Hooda’s nomination by the grand old party is believed to have made the election a cakewalk for his party.

The Tribune has learnt that the BJP had a different plan in place to try to take away both full term Rajya Sabha seats and also the one for which the bypoll is to be held, but the nomination of Deepender Hooda as candidate clinched the issue for the Congress as the ruling party decided to go with only Ram Chander Jangra for the regular seat and Dushyant Gautam for the seat having a bypoll.

In the 90-member Haryana Assembly, the BJP has 40 legislators and its alliance partner 10. With the support of six of the seven Independents, its tally becomes 56.

The Congress, the main opposition party, has 31 members. The INLD has one member while one legislator belongs to the Haryana Lokhit Party.

Under normal circumstances, nothing could have stopped the Congress from winning one of the two full term seats, given the fact that the party has 31 legislators — one more than one-third.

However, under almost similar circumstances, the BJP had managed to win both Rajya Sabha seats in June 2016 though the party had the support of 55 MLAs. Independent candidate RK Anand, supported by the INLD and Congress, was supposed to have the support of 35 MLAs — 19 of the INLD, 15 of the Congress and one of SAD MLA supporting the INLD.

Anand had lost to media baron Subhash Chandra after 12 votes were rejected on the grounds that these were marked with a different pen ink. At that time, the Opposition had alleged that a BJP MLA replaced the pen, resulting in rejection of votes and causing embarrassment to the Congress.

Sources said the ruling party was not averse to do an encore of 2016, maybe in a different fashion, but the moment the Congress fielded Deepender Hooda, it had to change its plan.

Of the 31 Congress MLAs, at least 24 owe their allegiance to former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda. They were present at his Delhi residence three days back during his Holi luncheon meet.

If sources close to Hooda are to be believed, Deepender Hooda was assured of support not only from Meham MLA Balraj Kundu, who had withdrawn support from the BJP, but also from some JJP MLAs.

Though JJP sources denied this, the manner in which the party’s Narnaund MLA Ram Kumar Gautam had been openly criticising Deputy Chief Minister Dushyant Singh Chautala and some others like Tohana MLA Devender Babli had been discreetly expressing their discontent, polling for the two full term seats could have resulted in a big embarrassment for the BJP-JJP combine, said the sources.

The BJP, according to the sources, was also wary of Haryana Lokhit Party’s Sirsa MLA Gopal Kanda since the party had spurned his offer of support after the elections. Now, with his election to Rajya Sabha a certainty, Deepender Hooda will be the lone Opposition voice in Parliament since all 10 Lok Sabha MPs and four out of five Rajya Sabha MPs will be of the BJP.