assembly-elections

Updated: Sep 30, 2019 18:47 IST

Wrestlers Yogeshwar Dutt and Babita Phogat will contest from Baroda and Dadri while former captain of India hockey team Sandeep Singh will fight from Pehowa, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) announced on Monday, releasing its first list of candidates for next month’s assembly election in Haryana.

Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar will contest from Karnal, the seat he won for the first time in the last assembly election.

The BJP’s central election committee met last evening to decide candidates for the Haryana assembly election. The BJP released list of candidates for 78 out of 90 assembly seats for the October 21 vote. Seventeen of the 90 seats are reserved for the Scheduled Castes

Haryana BJP chief Subhash Barala will contest from Tohana.

Seven MLAs including two Cabinet ministers Vipul Goel who represented Rao Narbir who was the legislator from Badshahpur, have been dropped from the list.

Sandeep Singh and Olympic medallist Yogeshwar Dutt had joined the BJP on September 26 while Babita Phogat, also an Olympic medallist, had joined the saffron party on August 12. Phogat’s wrestling saga had inspired the Aamir Khan-starrer Bollywood film ‘Dangal’

The BJP which won 47 seats in the last assembly elections in 2014 to form its first government in Haryana, is contesting all 90 seats on its own. Seventeen of the 90 seats are reserved for the Scheduled Castes.

The party is already in pole position in the election campaign with the opposition seemingly in disarray.

The BJP is banking heavily on the clean image of chief minister Khattar and the development works carried out by his government. Earlier this month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the BJP’s Haryana campaign in Rohtak where he endorsed a second term for Khattar.

The revocation of Article 370 has become a major poll plank for the BJP in the campaign while the opposition parties are trying to corner the ruling party by highlighting the “economic slowdown”.