Former Hisar MP Brijendra Singh had quit the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to join the Congress a month ago. | Photo Credit: File photo
Former Hisar Lok Sabha member Brijendra Singh, who had quit the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to join the Congress a month ago, on Sunday held the “State’s internal politics” responsible for denial of party ticket to him from the seat for upcoming Lok Sabha poll in Haryana.
Mr. Singh, a former bureaucrat, and two-time former Cabinet Minister Kiran Choudhry’s daughter Shruti Choudhry were two notable omissions from the Congress’s list for Haryana released on April 25. Mr. Singh, son of former Union Minister Chaudhary Birender, was seeking ticket from Hisar, and Ms. Choudhry had staked claim to the Bhiwani-Mahendragarh Lok Sabha seat. The tickets for the two Lok Sabha segments, instead, went to former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda’s loyalists Jai Prakash and Rao Dan Singh.
The denial of tickets to the two leaders again brought to fore factionalism in the party’s State unit as both Chaudhary Birender and Ms. Kiran Choudhry don’t get along well with Mr. Hooda.
Breaking his silence on the matter after a meeting with his supporters in Jind, Mr. Singh, at a press conference, said it was an important “learning” for him to know that the world was not as simple and straight as it seemed. He said his entry into the politics and next five years as BJP’s Hisar MP passed off smoothly without an opportunity for him to mature as a politician, but this incident would make him “smarter”.
He added that being a sitting MP [until he resigned last month] he was expecting the ticket, but “it was alright if he did not get it and would move on”.
Without revealing much, he hinted that a lot was going to happen in the politics of Haryana, with the Assembly polls due later this year, in the time to come and lot of revelation would be made to the people of the State.
In reply to a question, Mr. Singh said the Congress had an edge over the BJP in Haryana as of today and the two national parties were locked in a close contest in Haryana and Rajasthan. He added that the BJP had already stopped talking about its slogan, “Abki Baar 400 Paar (Will Cross 400-mark this time)” soon after the first phase of polling and returned to the “Hindu-Muslim narrative” since the party had realised that the ground realities were far off from the atmosphere being created earlier.
Mr. Singh said he felt more outsider than his father in the BJP and wanted to quit it and join the Congress during the party’s Bharat Jodo Yatra in 2022, but stepped back to avoid a byelection.
