Jannayak Janta Party leader Dushyant Chautala on Thursday said that his party is ready to support a Congress candidate in the elections to a Rajya Sabha seat in Haryana, The Hindu reported.
The former Haryana deputy chief minister suggested that the Congress should take the lead in fielding a joint Opposition candidate.
The seat in the Upper House of Parliament fell vacant after Congress leader Deepender Singh Hooda won the Rohtak Lok Sabha seat in the recently-concluded general elections.
Chautala, however, said that the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress were deceiving the public.
“In the Rajya Sabha elections to be held in Haryana, Congress is running away from the battle,” The Hindu quoted Chautala as saying at a press conference. “Former Chief Minister Bhupinder Hooda’s statement that they [Congress] do not have the numbers shows ‘match fixing’ with BJP. If Congress really wants to compete with BJP, then it should field a joint opposition Rajya Sabha candidate.”
Chautala said that the Opposition “should unite to get a social personality, a player or an artist to lead Haryana in the Rajya Sabha”.
He also ruled out the possibility of realigning with the BJP in the Assembly elections likely to be held later this year, PTI reported. The BJP and the Jannayak Janta Party, who were in an alliance between October 2019 and March this year, snapped ties ahead of the recent Lok Sabha polls.
The general election results have shown that “what BJP had to face, we too had to face that”, PTI quoted Chautala as saying.
He admitted that besides the BJP, his party was also hurt by the impact of the farmers’ agitation, The Hindu reported.
The Jannayak Janta Party failed to win any of the 10 Lok Sabha seats its contested and secured a vote share of 0.87%. In the 2019 general election, while the party had not won any seat, its total vote share was 4.9% across the seven constituencies where it fought the polls.
Chautala said that his party will take feedback from workers across the state to plan for the Assembly polls.
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