After flagging off a mountaineering team of school students organised by the School Education Department and Adventure Club in Chandigarh, Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Tuesday said that tourism business in the State will be promoted through adventure sports. “Whatever infrastructure is required to take adventure forward on the lines of regular sports in the state, it will be provided so that every youth can become a participant in adventure,” Khattar added.
The Chief Minister said, “Adventure runs in the life of the villages of Haryana. Therefore, by training the youth, they will be brought into the business of adventure sports.”
He said that to promote adventure activities in Haryana, Sardar Milkha Singh Club has been established at Morni, due to which many activities are being conducted in this area. Apart from this, trekking routes are also being explored in the Aravalli hills for the youth so that adventure structure can be increased in South Haryana also.
He said that 1000 youth will be made capable by giving adventure training. The young generation is the future of the country and it is the government's responsibility to develop sports skills in youth so that they can become productive citizens of the country.
BJP's effective electoral juggernaut and Sharma's political management springs a surprise in Haryana RS Polls
BEHIND THE NEWS AMITABH SHUKLA
It goes to the credit of the effectiveness of BJP electoral juggernaut that the Haryana Rajya Sabha polls was always being billed as a cliffhanger despite the fact that Congress had the requisite number of MLAs to get its nominee Ajay Maken elected to the Upper House.
And the "reputation" of the electoral machinery of the BJP remained intact as the Independent candidate Kartikeya Sharma, supported by BJP and its allies, romped home in a battle which was seen as one of nerves and proved to be a political potboiler with several twists and turns till the results were declared after midnight.
One may not be surprised if a political movie is made soon on the exploits of the BJP electoral juggernaut in Haryana and how it managed to defeat two Congress Rajya Sabha nominees in successive elections—first it was R.K. Anand in 2016 who lost as media baron Subhash Chandra, backed by BJP, managed to win easily after the votes of a dozen odd Congress MLAs became invalid due to use of unauthorized pen and ink colour. No one has ever heard about the episode after that and what follow up action, if any, was taken by the Congress against the MLAs who changed ink. Wasn't it the mother of all excuses? All sorts of conspiracy theories were floated then but at the end of the day, no one was in doubt as to the reasons why the Congress nominee lost and Subhash Chandra won that Rajya Sabha battle.
The 10th June 2022 Rajya Sabha polls was in a way an extension of the previous election of 2016 as another media baron and industrialist Kartikeya Sharma, perhaps one of the richest in the Upper House now as per his declared assets, made a surprise entry at the last moment. Banking on the tight position in which the Congress was due to internecine internal war and uncertainty on the votes of a few MLAs as the 2016 election showed, Sharma was quick to get the support of the10-member Jan Nayak Janata Party, a partner in the Manohar Lal Khattar led BJP government in the state.
All the floodgates opened soon as Venod Sharma, the father of Kartikeya and a veteran of Haryana politics who has been a multi term MLA, Minister and MP, came in the campaign mode and managed the support of other parties and independents. His political networking skills in the state are legendary and recognized by everyone, cutting across political divides and he only has friends in political parties and no enemies. No wonder that JJP and Indian National Lok Dal are arch enemies in state politics but the lone INLD MLA Abhay Singh Chautala voted for Sharma. For BJP, snatching an additional seat from an impossible situation was paramount and more so when it came at the cost of the Congress.
The moment BJP realized that Kuldeep Bishnoi, Haryana Congress MLA from Adampur and son of former chief minister Bhajan Lal who has been in and out of Congress and had close association with the BJP in the past was sulking, it decided to cash in on the opportunity. Hoping to become the chief ministerial face of the party for the 2024 Assembly elections in the state, Bishnoi felt that he was consistently overlooked by the Congress high command.
Despite having little or no support outside his Assembly segment, he was hoping to become Haryana Congress President. When it did not materialise, he was looking for an opportunity to settle scores and be in the good books of BJP. All he had to do was to switch sides in a tight contest like this. This is what he did after a couple of meetings with chief minister Khattar. Expelling Bishnoi from all party positions is of little consequence as he is eyeing a bigger role in BJP, perhaps to mobilise Bishnoi votes in Rajasthan which goes to polls in 2023.
But despite the “betrayal” of Bishnoi which the "betrayer" termed as a "conscience vote", Congress still could have won but because of the mystery of one invalid vote, it had to eat a humble pie. Had Congress candidate Maken got even 30 votes out of 31, he could have gone through. There lies the story of another political mystery and betrayal within the Congress. Clearly, one Congress MLA was won over as at this stage, it is unthinkable that someone would cast an invalid vote by mistake in a contest like this. As all Congress MLAs, except two, were being “trained” at a resort in Raipur it is unbelievable that after so much “training”, one invalid vote would be cast. So was it the one MLA who did not attend the training session or someone who did attend it but still was won over by the opposite camp? The second missing MLA from the training session was Bishnoi himself who in any case cross voted while the first was Kiran Chowdhury. Of course, Chowdhury has vehemently denied that she was the one whose vote was declared invalid.
In the end result, the message was loud and clear. In the political potboiler, Khattar along with the Independent candidate Kartikeya Sharma scored a grand victory over state Congress President Bhupinder Singh Hooda, who is now the chief strategist of the party after he edged out Shelja as the chief of the Haryana Congress and got his staunch loyalist on the post in the run up to the 2024 assembly polls. Khattar, who played an active but behind the scene role and Sharma simply outplayed Hooda. Khattar sacrificed his sleep when the news of victory came out and he was flashing a smile at 3 am in the morning when the results were finally declared.
The arithmetic of the Haryana Assembly was this, out of 90 MLAs, independent candidate Balraj Kundu abstained and a vote of Congress was rejected leaving 88 votes valid. Sharma got 29.6 votes while Maken received 29. The percentage was due to the second preference votes of which Congress got none.
On the invalid vote, Khattar had a cryptic response. He said Congress trained its MLAs for a week before this election, but the BJP’s one-day training had overshadowed their training. They failed and we passed, he said.
After the embarrassing loss, Congress now has got into a damage control mode and sought a report from AICC in-charge of Haryana Vivek Bansal who has zeroed in on 3-4 MLAs, one of whom could have cast the invalid vote. Bansal was present inside the polling station where one MLA flouted party directive and voted wrongly.
There was a minor consolation for the Congress in Ashok Gehlot ruled neighbouring Rajasthan where the party managed to deny a Rajya Sabha berth to media baron Subhash Chandra who had shifted from Haryana to try his luck. Chandra had managed to win an impossible election in 2016 in the now famous or infamous “Inkgate” , exposing the chinks within the Congress ranks. Sharma and Khattar took it from there and made impossibility into a possibility.
(The writer is Senior Resident Editor, The Pioneer, Chandigarh)
