Haryana's Sohna faces problems of party deserters, imported MLAs

Situated 30 km away from the national capital’s satellite town of Gurgaon, the Sohna Assembly constituency in Haryana is bereft of the development that it should have ideally boasted. Add to its woes, the sitting Congress MLA Dharambir Singh switched over to the BJP just two months back.

“It doesn’t matter if the MLA switched over to the BJP. There are some people who are involved in selfish politics. There is an ocean of leaders in the Congress,” Congress candidate Rohtas Singh Bedi told IBN7, national deputy bureau chief, Neeraj Gupta. Bedi is also seen as a youth icon by his supporters. “Rohtas is young and if he wins it will be a great morale booster for the youth,” one of his supporters said.

Dissent was visible also in the Indian National Lok Dal, as the party’s Sohna block president Satbir Pahlwan left the party to join the BJP because he was denied.

“Everyone salutes the rising sun. INLD chief Om Prakash Chautala gave the ticket to someone else as he was greedy of money. I was representing the party for the last twenty years,” Pahlwan said. When pointed out that Tej Pal Tanwar had got the BJP ticket from Sohna and not him, Pahlwan said, “I did not join the BJP for a ticket. I joined the party to take Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of development forward. You can see the BJP manifesto which caters to all sections and age of the society.”

However, the INLD candidate Kishore Yadav did not agree that he bought the ticket and not on merit as alleged by Pahlwan.

“People will decide the merit factor,” Yadav. Invoking the farmers’ cause, he said, “All farmers in Haryana know that Om Prakash Chautala is the only leader in Haryana who has sincerely worked for the farmers.”

Yadav was soon forced to defend his party leader when IBN7 reminded him despite Chautala’s popularity as claimed by the INLD candidate the party has not fared well in the polls. “It is because leaders of other parties lure the voters away with tall promises,” Yadav said.

Among all the candidates, Palak Verma from the Haryana Janhit Congress appeared to have an agenda in mind. “My party is clean and so people will vote for us. We will strive to give at least one employment in every family and ensure security for women. We will give clean governance,” Varma said.

Her words were intermediately applauded with claps as the state has poor record regarding employment generation and security for women. As a matter of fact, the sex ratio in Haryana is worrying with only 725 women against 1,000 men as per the 2012 data. The HJC was also determined to take on the BJP as Varma felt that the saffron outfit “deceived HJC chief Kuldeep Bishnoi” despite the parties being together during the April-May Lok Sabha poll this year. One of the voters present during the informal gathering said that the MLA should be a local as a parachuted legislator fails to comprehend the problems that Sohna faces.