Seven of the eight candidates announced by the Congress for Haryana are loyalists and supporters of former Chief Minister and the Leader of the Opposition Bhupinder Singh Hooda, clearly suggesting the dominant position he has in state politics. 

Hooda’s son and Rajya Sabha MP Deepender Singh Hooda has again been fielded from Rohtak while former Union Minister and Congress General Secretary Kumari Selja will be the candidate from the Sirsa reserved seat. Selja is the only Hooda detractor to have found a nomination for the Lok Sabha polls. Selja has been pitted against former Haryana Congress president and BJP candidate Ashok Tanwar in Sirsa. Deepender will be contesting against sitting BJP MP Arvind Kumar Sharma. In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, Sharma defeated Deepender by a thin margin of nearly 7,500 votes.

The name of Divyanshu Budhiraja from Karnal has come as a surprise, as he was active only in youth Congress activities and is considered a lightweight candidate. He is considered close to Hooda and will take on former chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar of the BJP. Budhiraja too is a Punjabi like Khattar and perhaps this was the consideration for his nomination.

The Congress sprang a surprise by refusing tickets to Shruti Choudhry from Bhiwani-Mahendragarh and Brijendra Singh from Hisar, two family legatees who were expected to get the nomination, with the list bearing the stamp of senior Congress leader Hooda.

From the Bhiwani-Mahendragarh Lok Sabha seat, the Congress has replaced Shruti Choudhry (granddaughter of former CM Bansi Lal and daughter of former minister Kiran Chaudhary) with Rao Dan Singh this time, apparently because she had lost 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha polls with a huge margin. Rao is considered close to Hooda. Bhiwani-Mahendragarh has been considered a traditional seat of the family of Bansi Lal. But this time, the party appears to have changed its strategy while fielding an OBC community member against sitting BJP MP Dharambir Singh, who comes from the Jat community.

The Congress also did not field Brijendra Singh from the Hisar seat. Singh is the son of former Union minister Chaudhary Birender Singh and had won the 2019 parliamentary elections from Hisar as a BJP candidate. Brijendra had escalated the political temperature of the state by switching his loyalties to Congress party. He was the first sitting MP who had left BJP and joined Congress at a time when several political leaders were making a beeline to join the saffron outfit. This time, the Congress has fielded former Union minister Jai Prakash, who is close to Hooda, from Hisar.

From Ambala (Reserved) seat, the party has fielded sitting MLA Varun Choudhary, son of former Haryana Congress president Phool Chand Mullana, a long-time associate of Hooda. From Sonipat, the party has fielded a Hooda associate Satpal Brahmachari, while former State Minister Mahendra Pratap has been fielded from Faridabad.

Caste equations have also been kept in mind while declaring candidates, party leaders pointed out. Out of eight candidates, two (Deepender Hooda and Jai Prakash) are from the Jat community, while another two (Rao Dan Singh and Mahendra Pratap) are from the OBC category. Kumari Selja and Varun Chaudhary are from Scheduled Castes, while Satpal Brahmachari is a Brahmin. Budhiraja, who is from the Punjabi community, has been fielded from the prestigious Karnal seat in an attempt to woo the Punjabi community, especially after the BJP replaced its Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar in Haryana with Nayab Singh Saini last month.

The Congress, which is contesting nine of the 10 Lok Sabha seats in Haryana, has not yet announced a candidate for the Gurgaon constituency.

For the Gurgaon seat, the Congress is considering the names of actor-turned-politician Raj Babbar and former state minister Captain Ajay Singh. Hooda is pushing for actor Raj Babbar while AICC OBC department head and senior leader Ajay Yadav has also staked a claim.

Congress announced candidates for eight of the nine seats that it will contest in Haryana, having left Kurushetra for ally AAP. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), a constituent of the opposition INDIA bloc, has already declared its candidate Sushil Gupta from the Kurukshetra seat as per the seat agreement.