The Haryana BJP on Friday announced its candidates for the post of mayor in nine municipal corporations that go to the polls in March. The Municipal Corporation elections will be held in Gurugram, Manesar, Faridabad, Panipat, Karnal, Rohtak, Hisar and Yamunanagar to elect councillors and their respective mayors.
Barring Panipat, the rest of the MCs will go to the polls on March 2. The elections in Panipat will be held on March 9. The results for all MCs will be announced March 12. According to the press statement, in BJP’s list, six women candidates have been selected. The outgoing Karnal Mayor Renu Bala Gupta, a loyalist of Union power minister and former chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar has been given ticket on the post of mayor.
Other women candidates in the fray are state BJP women’s wing president Usha Priyadarshi from Gurugram Municipal Corporation; Parveen Joshi, the chairperson of the Haryana State Commission for Protection of Child Rights from Faridabad; Komal Saini from Panipat; Suman Bahmani, a former district education officer who took voluntary retirement last year, from Yamunanagar; and Selja Sachdeva from Ambala.
The party has picked Khattar’s former media adviser Rajiv Jain as its candidate from Sonepat. Jain was miffed after the party denied the assembly ticket to his wife and former minister Kavita Jain in the elections from Sonepat last October. The BJP had fielded Congress-rebel and Sonepat mayor Nikhil Madan from Sonepat instead. BJP national Scheduled Caste morcha vice-president Ram Avtar Valmiki, who unsuccessfully contested the 2019 assembly elections from Kalanaur (reserved) constituency, has been fielded from Rohtak for the mayor’s post. This time, the post in Rohtak is reserved for a candidate from the Scheduled Castes.
Praveen Popli, the state vice-president for NAMO app has been given the BJP ticket for the Hisar mayoral post. The BJP is yet to announce its mayor candidate for Manesar municipal corporation. Mayoral by-elections will be held in Ambala and Sonepat as their mayors Shakti Rani Sharma and Nikhil Madan won the assembly elections from Kalka and Sonepat constituencies, respectively, last October.
