A week after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) announced candidates for eight Lok Sabha constituencies in the Haryana, 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.

Lok Sabha election 2019: All you need to know about Haryana

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).

A career bureaucrat with political lineage, Brijendra Singh’s entry into the electoral arena would have happened long back when his father was in the Congress. The great grandson of Chhotu Ram, the illustrious farmer leader, Brijendra was always seen as a successor to the political heritage of the family. His polished demeanour as a civil servant is complemented by his ability to indulge in a rustic discourse. Singh’s wide experience as a public servant would stand him in good stead in his innings as a politician.

Arvind Sharma, who joined the BJP a few weeks ago after being promised a Lok Sabha nomination, was left disappointed when the BJP did not field him from Karnal, a seat he had won twice on Congress ticket. He is learnt to have been in touch with the Congress also after he was denied a ticket from Karnal. However, the BJP has somehow tried to placate him by fielding him from Rohtak, the bastion of former chief minister, Bhupinder Singh Hooda. Hooda’s son Deepender is a three-time MP from Rohtak.

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First Published: Apr 15, 2019 12:10 IST