The Central Election Committee of the Congress party on Tuesday announced Film Actor and Former Uttar Pradesh State President Raj Babbar as party's candidate from Gurugram Parliamentary Constituency.

Party sources said that for the Gurugram Lok Sabha seat, the Congress Party was considering the names of actor-turned-politician Babbar and former State Minister Captain Ajay Singh Yadav.

Senior Congress leader and former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda was pushing for the selection of Raj Babbar as the party’s candidate for Gurugram seat while AICC OBC department head and senior leader Capt Ajay Singh Yadav had also staked a claim.

Hooda’s choice was given priority again in the list of candidates for the Haryana Lok Sbaha Election and Actor Raj Babbar was given a ticket from the Gurugram Constituency.

A Party source close to Capt Ajay Yadav said that the only thing that went against Yadav was that he was not from Hooda camp and they wanted Raj Babbar.

With this, eight of the nine candidates announced by the Congress for Haryana are loyalists and supporters of former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, clearly suggesting the dominant position he has in state politics.

Union minister Rao Inderjit Singh who was again picked for the Gurugram Lok Sabha seat on Monday had filed his nomination papers at the mini-secretariat in Gurugram in the presence of Haryana chief minister Nayab Singh Saini. Singh, the incumbent MP, is a five-time parliamentarian who has won the Gurugram constituency three times in a row. BJP candidate and sitting MP Rao Inderjit has already started campaign in the constituency and covered many areas.

Gurugram, according to various political parties’ internal surveys, has around 6 lakh Ahir voters and 4 lakh Meo voters.  Realising the importance of Ahir voters, even the JJP has chosen popular rapper Rahul Yadav alias Fazilpuria to attract the vote bank.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections, Rao Inderjit Singh won the seat with a margin of 386,256 votes. He polled 881,546 votes with a vote share of 61.00 % and defeated Capt Ajay Yadav from Congress who got 495,290 votes (34.20 %).

 Babbar, who was born in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, is a three-time member of the Lok Sabha and a two-time member of the Rajya Sabha. He was also the state President of Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee. Babbar entered politics by joining Janata Dal in 1989, which was led by VP Singh. From 1994 to 1999 he was a member of the Rajya Sabha. He was re-elected in the 14th Lok Sabha elections for his second term in 2004. He was suspended from Samajwadi Party in 2006. Later he joined Congress party in 2008 and was elected for his fourth term as Member of Parliament in 2009, by defeating Dimple Yadav, wife of Akhilesh Yadav and daughter-in-law of Mulayam Singh Yadav. In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, he contested from Ghaziabad and lost to General VK Singh. He was appointed as the president of Uttar Pradesh congress committee (UPCC), but in 2019 elections he couldn't even manage to save his own seat and lost to Rajkumar Chahar of the Bharatiya Janata Party by a huge margin of 4,95,065 votes.