In remarks to ThePrint after the Congress announced its decision, Captain Ajay Singh Yadav, a senior party leader who unsuccessfully contested the 2019 polls from Gurgaon and had been once again hoping for a ticket, voiced his displeasure.
“We respect the party’s verdict and will abide by it. But whoever has decided on the party tickets by completely sideling senior party leaders hasn’t done any good for the party,” he told ThePrint. “First, senior Congress leader Birender Singh and Kiran Choudhry were sidelined and now, I have been treated likewise.”
Yadav’s comments come at a time when senior Congress leader and five-time Faridabad MLA Karan Singh Dalal has already signalled his displeasure at being passed over for a party ticket this year. Leaders like Birender Singh and Kiran Choudhry, too, are believed to be upset with the party for having denied tickets to their children — the former’s son Brijendra Singh and the latter’s ex-MP-daughter Shruti Choudhry.
Raj Babbar didn’t respond to ThePrint’s calls. This report will be updated if and when a response is received.
However, veteran party leader and former state chief minister Bhupinder Hooda backed Babbar, calling him a “good candidate”.
“He will be a formidable contestant for the Gurgaon seat,” Hooda told ThePrint over phone.
The Congress is contesting from nine of the state’s 10 Lok Sabha seats this election, while one seat — Kurukshetra — has been given to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) as part of its seat-sharing agreement.
While the Congress had announced candidates for eight seats last week, it had kept Gurgaon on hold until Tuesday.
Haryana will vote in the sixth phase of Lok Sabha polls on 25 May.
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From actor to seasoned politician — Raj Babbar’s journey
An actor known for Hindi movies such Insaf Ka Tarazu in 1980 and Punjabi movies such as Chann Pardesi in 1981, Raj Babbar is a three-time Lok Sabha and a two-time Rajya Sabha MP. Politically active since 1989 when he joined the Janata Dal, then led by former prime minister V.P. Singh, Babbar eventually moved to the Samajwadi Party.
In 1994, he became a member of the Rajya Sabha and stayed there until 1999, when he contested, and won, his first Lok Sabha election from Agra. He won the seat again in 2004.
Two years later, he was suspended from SP for his outbursts against then-party general secretary Amar Singh, whom he accused of promoting “broker culture”.
In 2008, he joined the Congress and a year later won the by-election for the Firozabad parliamentary seat by defeating Dimple Yadav, three-time MP and wife of SP chief Akhilesh Yadav.
In 2014, Congress fielded him from Ghaziabad but he lost the seat to BJP’s General V.K. Singh. In October 2016, Congress appointed him chief of the Uttar Pradesh’s Congress unit.
Babbar contested the 2019 general election from Fatehpur Sikri but lost to BJP’s Raj Kumar Chahar. Months later, Ajay Kumar Lallu replaced him as the Uttar Pradesh’s Congress chief.
An alumnus of the National School of Drama, Raj Babbar is married to theatre actor-director Nadira Babbar. The couple has two children — Arya Babbar and Juhi Babbar, both actors.
In 1983, Babbar married the late actor Smita Patil, with whom he has a son Prateik, also an actor.
Although his name was announced only Tuesday, the former MP has been taking more interest in Gurgaon since his name began to do the rounds as a possible candidate last month. On 21 April, for instance, Babbar posted on X a video of a crematorium wall collapse in Gurugram that claimed five lives.
Will the Congress gambit work?
There are nine assembly segments under Gurgaon Lok Sabha seat — Bawal, Rewari, Pataudi, Badshahpur, Gurgaon, Sohna, Nuh, Ferozepur Jhirka, and Punahana. Out of these, four — Bawal, Pataudi, Gurugram, and Sohna — are with the BJP while Rewari, Nuh, Ferozepur Jhirka, and Punahana are with the Congress.
The lone remaining seat, Badshahpur, is held by an independent candidate.
In his comments to ThePrint, Captain Ajay Singh Yadav refused to explicitly blame anyone for the Congress decision to field Babbar. He did, however, hint that he was referring to Hooda.
While Kiran Choudhry and ex-Hisar MP Brijendra Singh have both publicly said they would accept the party’s decision, they have also voiced displeasure.
For instance, Choudhry said earlier this week that her daughter deserved the ticket because she “held the party’s flag firmly in Bhiwani-Mahendragarh constituency” amid the Modi wave in 2014 and 2019.
Similarly, at a meeting with supporters in Jind this week, Brijendra blamed “some state leaders” for the party denying him a ticket while his father Birender Singh, who rejoined the Congress only last month, angrily exclaimed his son should “now be a contender for the top post in the state”.
Meanwhile, former Congress minister Karan Singh Dalal is believed to be consulting his supporters over his next course of action after the party announced Mahender Pratap Singh as its candidate from Faridabad.
Political observers are divided over how the Congress’s choice of candidate for Gurgaon will play out in the elections.
Analyst Mahabir Jaglan believes that given Gurgaon’s more cosmopolitan population, Babbar could give a tough fight to BJP’s Rao Inderjit Singh.
“Unlike other towns of Haryana, where caste factors weigh high, Gurugram is more a cosmopolitan city where people from across the country are settled and doing jobs in multinationals. By fielding Raj Babbar, who has been a successful actor and a seasoned politician, the party hopes to make a dent in the urban voters who went with the BJP in 2014 and 2019,” he said.
Babbar, like former chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar, is a Punjabi who traces his roots to Pakistan’s Punjab. According to Jaglan, by fielding two Punjabi candidates — Babbar from Gurgaon and Divyanshu Budhiraja from Karnal — the Congress hopes to counter Khattar and his BJP and ensure that the party doesn’t turn it into a “Jat versus non-Jat election” like 2019, Jaglan said.
“This is the first time that the Congress has fielded only two Jat candidates – Deepender Singh Hooda from Rohtak and Jai Parkash from Hisar,” the analyst said. “In 2019, the Congress fielded four Jats — Deepender Singh Hooda from Rohtak, Bhupinder Singh Hooda from Sonipat, Nirmal Singh from Kurukshetra, and Shruti Choudhry from Bhiwani.”
However, Gurugram-based Pawan Kumar Bansal believes that by picking Babbar, the Congress has “gifted” the Lok Sabha seat to the BJP. The Congress, this analyst says, will get votes from Nuh by default, particularly in the aftermath of the Nuh violence.
“A candidate like Captain Ajay Yadav could have given Rao Inderjit Singh a good fight, particularly in the Ahirwal belt of the Rewari district. On the other hand, Raj Babbar is completely new to the area which will work to his disadvantage,” Bansal said.
On its part, the BJP doesn’t appear bothered by Babbar’s candidature, believing it doesn’t matter who the Congress picks.
“It’s for the Congress to name its candidate. However, the people of Haryana have already made up their minds to give Prime Minister Narendra Modi a third chance. The BJP will win all 10 seats in Haryana and the NDA will come to power at the Centre with more than 400 seats as Modi ji said,” Haryana BJP spokesperson Sanjay Sharma told ThePrint.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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