Birender Singh’s son is BJP candidate from Hisar

NOMINEES Congress turncoat Arvind Sharma is the party’s pick for Rohtak seat

NEW DELHI: The BJP on Sunday cleared the names of Union minister Birender Singh’s bureaucrat son, Brijendra, as candidate from Hisar constituency and former Congress MP Arvind Sharma, who joined the saffron party recently, from Rohtak seat. Both Hisar and Rohtak are considered strongholds of Bhajan Lal and the Hooda families. Sharma has been a two-time MP from Karnal.

CHANDIGARH: A week after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) announced candidates for eight Lok Sabha constituencies in the state, it named Haryana IAS officer Brijendra Singh for Hisar and former Congress MP, Arvind Sharma for Rohtak seat.

Brijendra, 46, the son of Union Steel Minister, Birender Singh, a prominent Jat leader, will make his poll debut, thereby putting an end to his career as a bureaucrat. The IAS officer is seeking voluntary retirement from service and has already submitted his papers to the Haryana chief secretary.

Brijendra’s father, Birender Singh is a BJP Rajya Sabha MP and his mother, Prem Lata is a BJP MLA in Haryana from the Uchana Kalan assembly constituency.

His father Birender Singh, on Sunday, said in New Delhi he has offered to resign from the cabinet and from the Rajya Sabha as his son has got a Lok Sabha ticket. Singh said he wanted to send across a message against dynasty politics. The Union minister said he has informed BJP president

Amit Shah about his resignation offer and it was up to the party chief to take the final call. Birender Singh, a thoroughbred Congressman

for four decades, had switched sides to join the BJP in 2014.

Birender is known to have tried to get a Congress ticket for his son during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, without success.

The saffron party also fielded former Congress MP, Arvind Sharma, 55, from Rohtak Lok Sabha seat. Sharma, a three-time MP (once an independent from Sonepat and twice as a Congressman from Karnal) had joined the BJP a couple of weeks ago. He had quit the Congress in 2014. Sharma whose ancestral village is in Jhajjar district, a part of Rohtak constituency, is the second Brahmin candidate to have been fielded by the BJP in Haryana. Sitting MP Ramesh Kaushik was fielded from the neighbouring Sonepat last week. Sharma will face on three-time Congress MP, Deepender Hooda from Rohtak.

The BJP had last week announced party nomination for five sitting MPS Rattan Lal Kataria (Ambala), Dharambir Singh (Bhiwani-mahendergarh), Ramesh Kaushik (Sonepat), Rao Inderjit Singh (Gurgaon) and Krishan Pal Gurjar ( Faridabad) besides fielding former bureaucrat, Sunita Duggal (Sirsa), Sanjay Bhatia (Karnal) and Haryana minister, Nayab Saini (Kurukshetra).