Power Games: Bollywood actor Randeep Hooda rejects BJP advances
In order to win the Lok Sabha elections in Haryana, the governing BJP is working hard to find the best candidates. Film actor Randeep Hooda is being courted by the party to run for office on its ticket from the Rohtak seat, which is seen to be a bastion of state Congress veteran Bhupinder Singh Hooda. According to internal polls, the party’s central leadership believes that Arvind Sharma, the current MP, may lose in Rohtak and intends to move him to the nearby city of Sonipat.
The last election had been close to his win. Due to his involvement in a sexual scandal, the Sonipat BJP MP may not be nominated again for the position. According to sources, party officials narrowed down their choices for Arvind Sharma’s replacement in Rohtak to Jat leader Randeep Hooda. Manohar Lal Khattar asked Randeep to run for the election twice before he announced his resignation as Chief Minister. Randeep, however, has declined, stating that he would want to focus on his film career and has no interest in politics.
The party then requested a conversation with Biplab Deb, the BJP leader for Haryana. However, he was unable to persuade the actor to alter his decision. Asha Hooda, Randeep’s mother, is a BJP member and resides in Gurgaon. BJP leader Sudha Yadav, who was appointed into the party’s central parliamentary board recently, knows her.
According to sources, Sudha decided to win over Randeep after the chief minister and the Haryana party were unable to do so. She talked with Randeep’s parents and informed them that their son might become a greater celebrity and have a better life if he ran for office on a BJP ticket. Sources claim that not even his parents could persuade the star to accept the BJP’s proposal.
The Hustle of Haryana
Hooda attempts to accomplish three goals at once.
In the 2018 Lok Sabha elections, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, the head of the Haryana Congress, intends to entirely marginalize his rivals inside the party. In a calculated move, he put up the name of movie actor Raj Babbar to succeed Rao Inderjit Singh of the BJP in the Gurgaon Lok Sabha constituency. Sources claim Hooda has three goals in mind when he suggests Babbar’s name. One is to refuse his party rival Captain Ajay Yadav the Gurgaon seat.
Two, deny the family of former chief minister Bansi Lal the Bhiwani-Mahendragarh seat. The daughter-in-law of Bansi Lal, Kiran Chawdhary, is an MLA representing one of the Bhiwani assembly seats, and her daughter, Shruti Chowdhary, has run in three Lok Sabha elections. After Gurgaon, Bhiwani Lok Sabha seat is home to the second-largest Yadav population. In order to make up for Gurgaon’s defeat, Hooda intends to hand the seat to Rao Dan Singh, a Yadav community supporter. A political folktale in the state is the conflict between Hooda and Kiran.
Kiran is a member of the anti-Hooda gang known as ‘SRK,’ an acronym for (Kumari) Selja, Randeep (Surjewala), and Kiran. A Jat candidate will need to find accommodation in another constituency if a Yadav is elected to the Bhiwani seat, which is one of the state’s four Jat seats (the other three being Rohtak, Sonipat, and Hissar). Hooda intends to accomplish his third goal in this manner. He wants to run for the Faridabad seat against his Jat relative Karan Dalal.
There is a problem, however. Raj Babbar is not interested in running from Gurgaon. Actor Sunil Dutt formerly represented Mumbai North-West, a seat he is interested in challenging from. Moreover, Babbar does not seem to be under any pressure from the Congress central leadership to contest from Gurgaon. Consequently, the Bansi Lal family could be able to hold onto Bhiwani and the party might run Rao Dan Singh against Rao Inderjit Singh from Gurgaon. Hooda would have trouble swinging even the seat in Faridabad for Karan Dalal.
