Amitabh Shukla | Chandigarh
The announcement of the first
list of Congress candidates from the region has thrown in several surprises,
the main being the omission of the names of Union Minister Manish Tewari from Ludhiana
and former Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal from Chandigarh .
Even though the names of four
sitting MPs from Punjab has been announced, the name of
Tewari, MP from Ludhiana and
Minister of Information and Broadcasting in the Manmohan Singh Cabinet is
missing. This comes even as the name of Preneet Kaur, another Minister in the
Union Cabinet is there in the first list from Patiala .
The other three names in the first list from Punjab are that of sitting MPs
Ravneet Bittu from Fatehgarh Sahib, Vijay Inder Singla from Sangrur and
Harminder Gill from Khadoor Sahib. Besides Tewari, the name of Santosh
Chaudhary, the MP from Hoshiarpur and another minister from Punjab
in the Union Cabinet is also missing.
As there is hardly any claimant
from Ludhiana , Congress circles in
the state found absence of Tewari’s name in the first list as surprising. Party
sources said that he could even be considered from Chandigarh ,
his home town in place of the tainted Pawan Kumar Bansal whose name emerged in
the infamous Railgate. As more discussions are underway, no announcement could
take place, a source insisted.
Bansal had to resign as Railway
Minister due to the bribery scandal in which his nephew was arrested by the
CBI. So far no name has been announced from Chandigarh
as well even though Bansal is a strong contender and has been MP for three terms.
From Haryana, only seven names
have been declared so far. This includes all the five sitting MPs — Deepender
Singh Hooda from Rohtak, Naveen Jindal from Kurukshetra, Arvind Sharma from
Karnal, Avtar Singh Bhadana from Faridabad and Shruti Chaudhary from
Bhiwani-Mahendragarh.
The two new names in the list are
veteran leader Sampat Singh from Hisar who left the INLD to join Congress
and Jagbir Malik from Sonipat in place
of sitting MP Jitender Singh Malik who refused to contest this time. No name has
been announced from Ambala which was represented by Selja in the Lok Sabha
before she was nominated for the Rajya Sabha. Newly appointed Haryana Congress
President Ashok Tanwar could be shifted to Ambala from Sirsa. That perhaps
could be the reason why no candidates have been declared for the two seats. The
third seat from where Congress has not made any announcement is Gurgaon from
where sitting MP Rao Inderjeet left the party to join the BJP.
Interestingly, there is no one
from Himachal Pradesh in the first list of 194 announced by the Congress. The
State has four Lok Sabha seats in which Congress has one seat while the BJP
remaining three. Though Mandi is the least contentious seat, being represented
by Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh’s wife Pratibha Singh, the party has
refrained from announcing her candidature. Sources in the party said that all
four names would be announced at the same time. (March 9, 2014 )
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