Haryana Congress screening panel to meet on August 26 to shortlist candidates for assembly polls

New Delhi: The selection of Congress candidates for the Haryana Assembly election is gathering steam with the party scheduling the first meeting of its Screening Committee headed by senior leader Ajay Maken on Monday.

Sources said already 2,556 people have submitted applications to be considered as candidates to the party while the members of Pradesh Election Committee have been given time till Friday to suggest names to the Screening Committee.

The election to all the 90 seats in Haryana will be held on October 1 along with the third and final phase of Jammu and Kashmir polls. The last date of nominations for Haryana polls is September 12 while the counting of votes will be on October 4.

The Maken-led committee, which also has Manickam Tagore, Jignesh Mevani and Srinivas BV, have been tasked by the central leadership to shortlist candidates from diverse social backgrounds besides considering loyalty to the party and their winnability.

On Wednesday, members of the Pradesh Election Committee met in Delhi to discuss election strategy as well as the contours of candidate selection. The meeting was attended by senior leaders Bhupinder Hooda, Kumari Selja, Randeep Surjewala and Uday Bhan besides in-charge Deepak Babaria.

While the central leadership is keen to explore possibilities of alliance, the Hooda-dominated leadership in the state is against a tie-up with AAP for Assembly elections. The state leadership has now been asked to spell out its strategy, as Congress and AAP had fought the Lok Sabha polls together.

The Screening Committee as well as the party’s Central Election Committee (CEC), which finalises the candidates, will face intense pressure from leaders in the state. Former Chief Minister Hooda will not leave any stone unturned to corner his in-house opponents Selja and Surjewala during ticket distribution.

If one goes by the experience of the Lok Sabha polls, Hooda faction is expected to garner a large number of seats. In Lok Sabha polls, candidates in eight out of nine seats went to Hooda camp while Selja was the lone anti-Hooda camp leader who managed to get a ticket.

Projected as a challenge to Hooda’s aspiration to return to power as Chief Minister or install his son Deepender in the chair, Selja, a Lok Sabha MP, has already made it clear that she would like to fight the Assembly election while leaving the final decision to the High Command. Surjewala is also not averse to fight the polls if the leadership green signals the move.

Selja had conducted a parallel yatra in the state recently while state unit-sponsored ‘Haryana Mange Hisab’ yatra led by Deepender Hooda was on. Surjewala had also joined Selja’s yatra.