Amid the ongoing race between Haryana Congress president Kumari Selja and former state Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda's son Deepender Hooda for nomination to the Rajya Sabha seat, a senior party leader on Thursday batted for later's candidature.
The final decision is taken by the party high command, but party legislators can keep their view. And the legislators want that Deepender (Singh Hooda) should be nominated, but it is up to the party high command, Rohtak MLA B B Batra told reporters in Rohtak.
Batra, a Hooda loyalist, batted for the junior Hooda's nomination against the current Rajya Sabha MP Selja, whose term expires next month.
Congress has 31 MLAs in the 90-member Haryana assembly and the majority of them are loyalists of Hooda, who, party sources claim, had been vigorously pushing for his son's candidature to the Upper House.
Rohtak MLA Batra claimed that the majority of Congress legislators from the state want Deepender Hooda to be nominated.
Deepender has been a three-time MP from Rohtak. In 2014, the Congress could manage to retain only the Rohtak seat losing all other nine Lok Sabha seats from Haryana. However, in 2019, Deepender narrowly lost to BJP's Arvind Sharma as the saffron party won all ten parliamentary seats from the state.
Selja, on the other hand, who was appointed as Haryana Congress president weeks before the October 2019 assembly polls, is considered close to party chief Sonia Gandhi.
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While Congress is expected to announce the name of its candidate later in the evening, earlier in the day BJP announced Dushyant Kumar Gautam and Ram Chander Jangra as its candidates for the Rajya Sabha polls.
The two will file their nomination paper on Friday -- the last day of filing the papers.
The election will be held on March 26.
Notably, the two Rajya Sabha vacancies are due to resignation of BJP's Ram Kumar Kashyap and the expiry of Congress leader Kumari Selja's term next month. A third vacancy which has necessitated a bypoll rose following the resignation of former Union Minister and BJP leader Birender Singh.
In the 90-member Haryana Assembly, the BJP has 40 MLAs while its alliance partner JJP has 10. The main opposition Congress has 31 members while out of seven Independent MLAs, six have extended support to the BJP-JJP government. The INLD has one MLA while one member belongs to the Haryana Lokhit Party.