Chandigarh: Dealing a major jolt to Congress in Haryana, at least a dozen of its leaders – who were denied party ticket for the upcoming assembly election – filed their nominations as independents on the last day of filing papers on Thursday despite the frantic efforts of the party to dissuade them.
The 90-member Haryana assembly election is scheduled for October 5 while the votes would be counted on October 8.
The revolt in Congress came out in open during the day as the party released the names of its remaining 49 candidates in four instalments till early Thursday morning hoping to leave less time for dissent. But. The party anticipated the dissent beforehand – given the fact that it had received about 3,000 aspirants for tickets. Congress had named its 41 candidates a few days ago, accommodating all its 31 sitting MLAs.
The leaders who rebelled against the party decision of denying them the ticket alleging factionalism and internal bickering include former MLAs Sharda Rathore and Lalit Nagar, former Panchukula Mayor Upender Kaur Ahluwalia and others Vijay Jain, Jitender Bhardwaj, Satbir Ratera and Chitra Sarwara.
The rebels’ list also included Adarshpal Gurjar from Jagadhri seat who quit Congress to join Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and filed papers as an AAP candidate. In Panipat also, former Congress MLA Rohita Revari quit the party and filed her papers as an independent candidate. Some of the other party leaders who filed their nominations as independent candidates included Ram Kishan Fauji, Neelam Agrawal and Abhijit Singh.
So much so, even though the Congress delayed its list till the last day, it stitched an alliance with CPI-M for one seat (Bhiwani) following the collapse of its talks with AAP.
BJP TOO IN DAMAGE-CONTROL MODE
However, even though the ruling BJP which had 40 sitting MLAs had already released its almost entire list of 90 candidates, dropping several of sitting MLAs, it continued its damage-control exercise on Thursday to placate its dissenting leaders. Sources in BJP said that the party leadership had tried to fight anti-incumbency by dropping some of its MLAs.
According to information, it had already succeeded in dissuading former BJP state chief Ram Bilas Sharma, a tall Brahmin leader from Mahendergarh, Badkhal MLA Seema Trikha, former MLAs Naresh Kaushik and Rao Bahadur Singh and a few others including Lokesh Nagru and brought them back to the party fold.
Meanwhile, both, Congress and BJP were said to be still making frantic efforts to placate their dissident leaders as the last date of the nomination withdrawal is September 16.
