Retired lt General DP Vats, who was chosen by the BJP as its nominee for the lone Rajya Sabha seat in Haryana, filed his nomination papers on Monday in presence of Chief Minister Manohar lal Khattar.

The seat is being vacated by Congress member Shadi lal Batra. The ruling BJP has 47 MlAs in the 90-member House and is set to win the seat comfortably. The INlD has 19 members, the Congress 17, the BSP and the SAD one each. There are five Independents.

Vats, who hails from Hisar, had also served as director and commandant of the prestigious Armed Forces Medical College, Pune. He served as chairman of the Haryana Public Service Commission between May 2011 and April 2012 during the Bhupinder Singh Hooda-led Congress Government in the State.

Before Vats’ name was announced for the seat, the names of party’s senior leader from the State Ganeshi lal,former Mahendragarh MP Sudha Yadav and BJP’s media in-charge Rajiv Jain were doing rounds.

“By training and conviction, a soldier is a nationalist,” Vats told reporters before filing his papers and added that a nation where a soldier was respected remained safe and secure.

Once elected, he said, he will raise issues of national importance and never indulge in any kind of petty politics. Vats said he belonged to a family of farmers and had even played a role in “creating modern outlook of the Khaps (or caste councils)”.

He appealed to the people to strengthen the hands of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who, he said, was leading the nation on the path of progress. He thanked Modi, BJP chief Amit Shah and Khattar for reposing faith and confidence in him.

Haryana’s Education Minister Ram Bilas Sharma thanked his party’s senior leadership in nominating Vats on the occasion. He said former Army chief General VK Singh who was given a Cabinet berth in the Modi Cabinet also belonged to the State.

Sharma said Haryana constituted just 2 per cent of the country’s land mass, but formed nearly 11 per cent of the nation’s armed forces strength.