The BJP on Saturday announced External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj’s sister Vandana Sharma as its candidate from Safidon in Haryana as it released the list of names for the remaining 47 seats for the Haryana Assembly elections on October 15. The BJP had on September 10 announced the names for 43 seats.
Of the 47 candidates given the party ticket, eight are women. The first list had seven women candidates thus taking the total tally of the fair sex to 15. Besides Sharma, other women candidates are latika Sharma (Kalka), Santoah Sarwan (Mulana-SC), Rohita Revari (Panipat city), Santosh Danoda (Narwana-SC), Swatantra Bala Choiudhary (Fatehabad), Sunita Duggal (Ratia-SC), and Seema Gaibipur (Uklana -SC).
Manish Growar has been fielded from Rohtak, Tejpal Tanwar from Sohna, Surendra Barwala from Jind, Sanjay Singh from Nuh and Vipul Goyal from Faridabad. Abhay Singh, a retired IAS will be contesting from Nagal Chaudhry.
The party’s Central Election Committee (CEC) met here under the chairmanship of BJP chief Amit Shah and in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The other members of the CEC, who attended the meet, include Union Ministers Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley, Ananth Kumar and Thawarchand Gehlot, and Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who was recently inducted into the all-important panel.
Party general secretary JP Nadda and general secretary (organisation) Ram lal, besides Shahnawaz Hussain and Haryana State leaders Rambilas Sharma, Anil Vig and Anil Jain, party’s Haryana affairs in-charge Jagdish Mukhi and election in-charge in the State Kailash Vijayvargiya were also present. The meeting started at 3 pm and continued for about five hours.
In the first list, the party had granted party tickets to the wife of veteran Congress leader Birender Singh, who recently quit the Congress and joined the BJP.
Earlier, prominent among the candidates announced are state BJP chief Rambilas Sharma from Mahendergarh, senior leader Anil Vij from Ambala Cant, former Congress leader and Rajya Sabha member Birender Singh’s wife Prem lata Singh from Uchhana Kalan, BJP’s Kisan Morcha chief OP Dhankar from Baadli, and former Chandigarh Mayor Gian Chand Gupta from Panchkula.
Former Haryana Ministers Jagdish Nehra in Rania, Krishna Gehlawat in Rai and Chattarpal Singh in Hansi were also named in the first list of candidates. BJP’s youth leader from Rohtak Capt Abhimanyu will contest from Narnaund and sitting MlA from Sonepat Kavita Jain has been renominated from the segment while senior BJP leader Santosh Yadav will fight from Ateli.
