Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati on Sunday declared Arvind Sharma to be the party’s chief ministerial candidate for Haryana. Sharma joined the BSP switching from the Congress.
“If our party wins in the upcoming Haryana Assembly elections, then Arvind Sharma will be our chief ministerial candidate. We will follow the same policy of Bahujan Hitai, Bahujan Sukhai as we did in Uttar Pradesh,’’ she announced at a Press conference in New Delhi.
Declaring that her party will contest Haryana Assembly elections on its own, Mayawati said if her party comes to power in the State, it will look after the interests of all sections of the society including of people from the weaker sections, religious minorities and also upper castes.
She revealed that Sharma had been in touch with her party for several months and understands its ideology and functioning.
Most of the Chief Ministers of Haryana have been from the Jat community. They have often ignored the interests of other communities. At times people from other communities have also been exploited. Therefore, the BSP has decided to project Sharma, a Brahmin, as its chief ministerial candidate in Haryana, she added.
A three-time MP, Sharma had represented Karnal in the 15th lok Sabha.He claimed that the Congress had failed to protect the interests of various communities in Haryana therefore, he decided to join the BSP.Sharma said that he was feeling ‘suffocated’ in the Congress in Haryana. He alleged that the party has not been addressing the needs of the poor, farmers and Dalits and claimed he had raised this in the party forum to no avail.
Sharma won the lok Sabha election from Sonepat in 1996 as an Independent candidate. He joined the Congress in 1999 and represented Karnal in the lok Sabha in 2004 and again in 2009. He lost to BJP’s Ashwini Kumar Chopra in the 2014 general elections.After failing to open an account in the lok Sabha elections, Mayawati’s BSP is testing waters in Haryana and Maharashtra where Assembly polls are due later this year.