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Wife Shakti’s win may pump up Venod’s political fortune
A near decade long high till early 2014 followed by a period of wilderness. Venod Sharma, former Haryana minister and business tycoon was regarded as a spent force
A near decade long high till early 2014 followed by a period of wilderness. Venod Sharma, former Haryana minister and business tycoon was regarded as a spent force in state politics. However, Wednesday’s mayoral poll victory of his wife, Shakti Rani Sharma from Ambala could just be the spark that may breathe new life into Venod’s flagging political career.
Shakti Rani Sharma who had got just 7,661 votes and finished a poor fifth when she contested her first election in 2014 from Kalka assembly constituency probably surprised everyone, including herself. Her comprehensive win by over 8,000 votes on Wednesday against the ruling BJP candidate is by no means a small achievement and has come as a shot in the arm for her husband’s plunging political stock.
In fact, Venod himself lost in 2014 from the Ambala City assembly seat by over 23,000 votes. The duo had contested as candidates of their fledgling outfit Haryana Jan Chetna Party after Venod said goodbye to the Congress well before the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. The party virtually folded up in 2019 assembly poll and Sharmas did not contest the assembly polls.
A big beneficiary of nine years of Congress rule (2005-14) in Haryana, Venod Sharma, the clever political brain that he is, could see the decline of the grand old party coming.
But his game plan of getting cosy with the BJP did not work out primarily due to stiff opposition by senior BJP leader, Sushma Swaraj. Venod, who was desperate to make a switch to the BJP or its erstwhile ally, Kuldeep Bishnoi’s now folded Haryana Janhit Congress, to guard his business interests was left high and dry after both BJP and Bishnoi cold shouldered him. His attempts to sing praises and back the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi too did not impress the saffron leadership.
His friendship with the then chief minister, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, had earned him a cabinet berth in 2005 and top of the line portfolios such as excise and taxation, public works, power. Between 2005 and 2009, he registered a nine-time increase in his assets - from ₹9.3 crore in 2005 to about ₹86 crore in 2009, as per a comparison of his poll affidavits done by Association for Democratic Reforms.
He was though forced to quit the Hooda cabinet in wake of allegations that he used his sway to influence witnesses in the Jessica Lal murder case in which his son Manu Sharma was the prime accused and was later sentenced to life imprisonment.
Venod, as the president of Chandigarh unit of the Congress, had suffered a big political setback after his son was arrested for killing Jessica. His revival came due to his friendship with Hooda who ensured that he got a ticket from Ambala City seat in 2005. Shakti Rani’s mayoral poll win could probably be just the stimulus that the former Congressman needs to start afresh.
