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Haryana NCP chief Virender Verma to contest from Karnal
A Ror community leader, Virender Maratha, as he is popularly known, took the decision three days after Congress fielded its youth state president Divyanshu Budhiraja as Karnal candidate against former chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar
In a major turn of events on Sunday, the Haryana president of the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharad Pawar), Maratha Virender Verma, announced to contest the Lok Sabha elections from Karnal with support from the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) against Congress.
A Ror community leader, Virender Maratha, as he is popularly known, took the decision three days after Congress fielded its youth state president Divyanshu Budhiraja as Karnal candidate against former chief minister (CM) Manohar Lal Khattar.
On Sunday, Maratha met his supporters at his residence and later reached Kurukshetra to meet INLD general secretary Abhay Chautala, who assured support, people familiar with the development said.
They further said the INLD has already announced candidates on six of the 10 seats in the state and decided not to field any candidate in Karnal.
Interestingly, Maratha’s party is part of the INDIA bloc at the national level and as per the seat sharing agreement of the alliance, Congress is contesting on nine seats in Haryana with Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) to fight on Kurukshetra.
Apart from him, stalwarts in Congress like Virender Rathore, Virender Shah, alias Bulle Shah, and Chanakya Pandit were eying the party ticket that chose 31-year-old Budhiraja instead.
Following the announcement, Maratha, accompanied by Chautala, said he will file his nomination papers on Tuesday and a formal alliance with NCP (SP) will also be announced with likely backing from Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).
On being asked about the reason, he said, “As part of the alliance, Congress should not have fielded its candidate in Karnal. The NCP has been an old ally, but they gave one seat to the AAP in Kurukshetra despite knowing that I’m the winnable candidate in Karnal. I was sure to contest the elections with prior approval from our party chief Sharad Pawar.”
A native of Karnal, Maratha has a long history of party hopping but has never won an election since he founded his front in 2003, Ekta Shakti Party. He has contested several elections and by-polls for the Vidhan Sabha and fought the first Lok Sabha election on the BSP ticket in 2009.
In 2014, he was a BSP candidate from the Assandh assembly seat. He has also been with the BJP as well as with the Congress before he joined the NCP last year.
