Gurugram: Former Union minister and Congress Working Committee (CWC) member Kumari Selja is leading against her rival Ashok Tanwar of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from the Sirsa parliamentary constituency by a margin of 42,102 votes, according to the early trends released by the Election Commission of India (ECI).
Tanwar and Selja were with the Congress in 2019 and had unsuccessfully contested elections from Sirsa and Ambala Lok Sabha seats, respectively. Sunita Duggal of the BJP had defeated Tanwar by a margin of over 2 lakh votes, while Kumari Selja lost to BJP’s Rattan Lal Kataria from Ambala by over 3.40 lakh votes.
Daughter of former Union minister, late Chaudhary Dalbir Singh — who had previously represented Sirsa in 1971, 1980, and 1984 — Kumari Selja ventured into politics with a byelection in 1988 after her father’s death. However, she lost to Het Ram of the Janata Dal.
Despite being denied a ticket in the subsequent 1989 elections, she won the Sirsa seat in the 1991 and 1996 Lok Sabha elections. She became MoS for Education and Culture in the Narasimha Rao government from 1991 to 1996.
After losing elections from Sirsa in 1998 and 1999 to Sushil Indora of the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD), Selja shifted her base to Ambala and was elected from the seat in 2004 and 2009.
Following her election to the 15th Lok Sabha in 2009, she was a Cabinet minister in Manmohan Singh-led UPA government from 2009 to 2014. She then lost elections from Ambala in 2014 and 2019 to BJP’s Rattan Lal Kataria.
As a prominent figure representing women and the Dalit community within the Congress party, Selja’s supporters champion her as a potential chief ministerial candidate in the forthcoming Haryana assembly elections.
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