All eyes are on Bhiwani, Maharashtra’s Congress candidate

With the Congress putting a lot of effort into stopping incumbent BJP MP Dharambir Singh’s winning march, and Singh aiming for a hat-trick win, the election campaign for the Bhiwani-Mahendragarh Lok Sabha seat is expected to be an intriguing one.

Political observers are now waiting for the constituency’s Congress candidate to be announced.

According to Congress insiders, the front-runners for the party ticket are Mahendragarh MLA Rao Dan Singh and Shruti Choudhry, granddaughter of the late Chief Minister Bansi Lal.

Rao Dan Singh is supported by the team of former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, whilst Shruti’s mother Kiran Choudhry is a part of the Selja-Randeep-Kiran (SRK) faction of the Haryana Congress.

Party insiders claim that Rao Dan Singh is also considering running from the Gurugram seat, where the names of former Haryana minister Capt. Ajay Yadav and actor-turned-politician Raj Babbar are also being discussed.

According to the reports, “Dan Singh and his supporters will try to get him fielded from Bhiwani-Mahendragarh if he does not get the ticket from Gurugram.”

However, the JJP candidate Rao Bahadur Singh’s admission into the race is probably going to alter the polling formula and the Congress leadership’s assessment.

In the Bhiwani-Mahendragarh parliamentary seat, where he ran as an INLD candidate in 2014 and received more over 2.75 lakh votes, Rao Bahadur Singh has a strong grip. Rao Dan Singh is a member of the Ahir (Yadav) community, which is his main source of support. A senior Congress politician notes, “The Jat voters may seem to be against the BJP, but if there isn’t another Jat candidate in the race, they may go towards BJP’s Dharambir.

However, political analysts also point out that the animosity the JJP leaders are seeing can also be a sign of the party’s declining support.

However, Rao Dan Singh’s supporters believe that he would get support from the Ahir community and Jats, who are less inclined to vote for the BJP in the wake of the farmers’ uprising and the events that followed.

Due to the anti-incumbency factor working against the governing BJP, the Congress is also anticipated to get support; however, the situation will become more apparent after the Congress announces its candidate.