Politically speaking, 2024 is a crucial year for Haryana. The state will witness both assembly and Lok Sabha elections. But the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party seems to be more focussed on the latter with initial surveys being done seat-wise for candidate selection. And if sources are to be believed, the BJP may not repeat more than 50% of its winning candidates from the state, in next year’s Lok Sabha polls.
Who could be out?
Haryana has a total of ten Lok Sabha seats and the BJP won all of them in 2019, in a spectacular show. But come 2024, more than 50% are highly unlikely to be repeated, say sources. Two BJP MPs—Brijendra Singh and Arvind Kumar Sharma—are very unlikely to be given tickets, say multiple party sources. Both of them have been openly critical of government policies. Sharma is also known to have an acrimonious relationship with chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar.
Sharma came into the spotlight in 2019 when he defeated influential Congress leader Deepender Singh Hooda from Rohtak.
The BJP, by practice, sends three names or more from each constituency to the party’s Central Election Committee (CEC), of which Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a member, to pick one. According to a senior BJP leader working in Haryana, there is a very slim chance of these two leaders’ names being among even the primary three.
Moreover, as many as four independent MLAs—Dharam Pal Gonder, Rakesh Daultabad, Randhir Singh, and Somveer Sangwan—recently met BJP’s Haryana in-charge Biplab Deb and expressed their “confidence in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership”. This has set speculation mills rolling about their joining the saffron party as next year’s Lok Sabha polls near. In that case, all of them would like a guarantee of a BJP ticket, which would inevitably mean denying tickets to many party MPs.
Some MPs prefer state politics, a few may fail in survey
If sources are to be believed, at least two out of the ten Haryana BJP MPs voluntarily want to step aside from fighting the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. News18 has learnt that both of them would prefer to dive into state politics and hence are lobbying for BJP tickets for the assembly elections in Haryana next year. One of them is Kurukshetra MP Nayab Singh Saini, confirmed a BJP source.
In fact, Nayab Singh was elected as an MLA in 2014 from Narayangarh and has been a minister in the Khattar government. After a stint as an MP, he seems to wish to return to state politics.
Also, the BJP has kick-started surveys across Haryana, where it has employed private organisations, to find out how popular or unpopular its MPs are, as of today. Given the fact that the party is facing anti-incumbency of two consecutive terms and local disenchantment in a few pockets of the state, over the year-long farmers’ protest in Delhi, many MPs are not expected to pass the 2024 test with flying colours. BJP sources who are involved in the process say the party will have to find “options”, in such a scenario.
Against this backdrop, it is very likely that 50% of the MPs, if not more, will not be repeated by the BJP in Haryana to fight the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
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