Hisar, Sep 29 : Launching an aggressive election campaign for Hisar bypolls, Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda on Wednesday accused Indian National Lok Dal's Om Prakash Chautala and Haryana Janhit Congress' Kuldeep Bishnoi of promoting dynasty politics and failing to give opportunities to party workers in elections.
Hooda himself appears to promote dynastic politics. He along with his MP son Deepinder Singh Hooda and other senior leaders launched an election campaign to seek
votes for congress candidate Jai Parkash for the October 13 bypolls to the Lok Sabha seat, vacated by the death of HJC chief Bhajan Lal.
While addressing various poll meetings, the chiefminister slammed the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) and Haryana Janhit Congress (HJC)-BJP candidates and said they
were “selfish political leaders who had played with people's sentiments.
“..Both parties (INLD and HJC) lack good leadership.Whenever election comes, the family members of both INLD and HJC contest elections and these leaders do not give
opportunity to their own workers,” Hooda said.
“It is meaningless to expect public welfare from them. How can these selfish leaders ensure development of the area?” the Chief Minister said.
State Parliamentary Affairs Minister Randeep Singh Surjewala and Chief Parliamentary Secretary Vinod Bhayana were among the leaders who addressed the election meetings in the constituency.
Giving credit to Jai Parkash, a three-time MP from Hisar, for the Rohtak-Hisar (via Hansi) railway track, Hooda said that Hisar would soon be directly linked to Delhi as the survey work for this had already been completed. In the Hisar Lok Sabha byelection due on Oct 13, Bhajan Lal's son Kuldeep Bishnoi is locked
in a traingular contest against Jai Prakash of Congress and Chautala's son Ajay Singh Chautala.
BJP is supporting Bhajan Lal's son.Three-time Chief Minister Bhajan Lal was the only towering non-Jat leader in Haryana's politics dominated by Jat community leaders. He was the only non-Congress winner in the state in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. All other nine Lok Sabha seats went to the Congress kitty at that time.
Bhajan Lal had won the Hisar Lok Sabha seat in the May 2009 elections as a Haryana Janhit Congress (HJC) candidate by a margin of about 7,000 votes, beating the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) and the ruling Congress nominees.The stakes for the three main players on the Hisar seat - the Congress, INLD and the HJC - this time are high as they now try to fit into his shoes.
The seriousness of the contest can be gauged from the fact that the main opposition INLD has announced the name of its leader Ajay Singh Chautala for the bypoll. Chautala, the son of former Chief Minister and INLD supremo Om Prakash Chautala, is a sitting legislator in the state.
For the HJC and Bhajan Lal's son Kuldeep Bishnoi, the stakes are high as it is important for his family to win this seat to retain the party's hold over the area.
Bishnoi is likely to field a family member or contest the election himself to give his best shot for this seat, the home district of the Bhajan Lal family.
For Bishnoi personally, it will be the first time he will face an election when his father is not around.
For the ruling Congress and Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda too, the bypoll is important.
Having come back to power in the October 2009 Assembly elections by piggy-backing on the support of independent legislators and then engineering defections in the HJC, Hooda has to prove that his government is popular.
The going is unlikely to be easy for the Congress on this seat though. The party has won the seat only five of the 12 times in the Lok Sabha elections held in the state.
Former MP Jaiprakash, who has won the seat three times - in 1989, 1996 and 2004 - is a strong candidate on Congress ticket. He won the election each time on the Janata Dal, Haryana Vikas Party and Congress tickets respectively.
There are nearly 1.3 million voters in Hisar. Over 400,000 of these are Jat voters.Meanwhile, calling the Hisar by-election a referendum on the Jan Lokpal Bill (JLB), Team Anna on Tuesday announced that it would “actively campaign” against political parties and their candidates who did not pledge to support their version of the Bill when it comes for voting in the Parliament.
“The candidates contesting in the Hisar by-election would have to get in writing from their respective party presidents that they support Anna Hazare's JLB. We will actively campaign against the candidates who fail to get such a letter,” said activist Arvind Kejriwal while talking to mediapersons.
He said the party presidents, like Sonia Gandhi in case of the Congress candidate and Nitin Gadkari in case of Kuldeep Bishnoi who is being supported by the BJP, would have to give in writing that their respective political parties would issue a whip in the Parliament in favour of the Jan Lokpal Bill when it comes for voting.
He said the party presidents would have to give in writing by September 30. The by-election in Hisar would be held on October 13.
Even among the candidates who give written assurances, Kejriwal said, the civil society's India Against Corruption (IAC) would appeal to the people to not to choose those who have a “tainted record”. “This is the next important milestone of our agitation against corruption,” said Kejriwal.
