Chandigarh: While the ruling BJP’s Sanjay Bhatia, a former MP, and Congress’ Dalit leader Karamvir Singh Baudh filed their nomination papers on Thursday for the two seats falling vacant on April 9, adding colour to the election and expecting cross-voting from the rival party, the BJP’s state vice president Satish Nandal, also entered the fray as an independent candidate.
Nandal’s entry is likely to pose a challenge for the Congress in case of cross voting.
March 5 was the last date for filing nomination papers for the said election; while the papers’ scrutiny will be done on Friday, March 9 will be the last date for withdrawal of papers; Polling, if required, would be on March 16. The vacancies arose as the terms of BJP members Kiran Choudhry and Ram Chander Jangra came to an end.
For record, in the House of 90, BJP has 48 MLAs, the Congress, 37, Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) has two MLAs while there are three MLAs who back BJP. However, with a candidate requiring 31 votes to win, the ruling BJP and Congress are in a comfortable position to win one seat each, though Nandal’s entry has made it a contest for Congress to win a seat.
Bhatia had won the Karnal Lok Sabha seat in 2019 by a record-breaking margin of over 6.56 lakh votes. A confidant of Union minister and former Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar, Bhatia had vacated his seat for Khattar for latter’s entry into Parliament after he stepped down as CM in 2024.
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Baudh is a retired government employee and Congress’ national scheduled caste wing coordinator. The party also understandably chose an SC leader so as to balance the caste representation in the state. And even though other contenders included former state party chiefs Udai Bhan and Ashok Tanwar, both SCs, Baudh was picked for his close association with SC employees and SC officers’ in the Haryana bureaucracy.
Nandal, a businessman, hails from Garhi-Sampla Kiloi assembly segment in Rohtak district, currently represented by former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda. A staunch rival of Hooda, Nandal was earlier with INLD.
