Gurugram: When Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini and his predecessor, Manohar Lal Khattar, inaugurated the election office and launched the poll campaign of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate, for the Hisar parliamentary seat Thursday, Kuldeep Bishnoi was conspicuous by his absence.
Bishnoi, a former Hisar MP who had expressed his desire to contest the seat again, had also put out a video days before skipping this event. In it, he asked people to vote for the BJP to strengthen Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s hand — but at the same time, signalled his unhappiness at not getting the ticket for Hisar, which went instead to state minister Ranjit Singh Chautala.
The son of Bhajan Lal, a former chief minister who was known for his mastery of the art of defection — he defected with his entire team of ministers and MLAs to the Congress from the Janata Party in 1980 — Bishnoi himself was considered a chief ministerial prospect before the BJP’s victory in the 2014 Haryana assembly elections. But now, after defecting to the BJP from the Congress in August 2022, he is far from the centre stage, with little to show other than the Adampur assembly seat — which the family has held since 1968 — now held by his son, Bhavya Bishnoi.
In his video posted on X on 25 March — a day after the BJP announced the names of Chautala and three other nominees, completing its slate of 10 candidates for Haryana — Bishnoi congratulated all the candidates, and asked his supporters to vote for them. But he went on to say that he had been getting calls from workers telling him they were dejected (at him being denied the ticket). Asking workers in both Haryana and Rajasthan — where the party had made him co-in-charge ahead of last year’s assembly polls — he appealed to them to “work for the victory of BJP candidates”.
भारतीय जनता पार्टी के सभी प्रत्याशियों को बधाई एवं शुभकामनाएँ। pic.twitter.com/TbumsvBPDW
— Kuldeep Bishnoi (Modi Ka Parivar) (@bishnoikuldeep) March 25, 2024
But this time, Bishnoi hasn’t been allocated a position in Rajasthan, either. When the BJP released its list of star campaigners for the state Thursday, his name was missing. From Haryana, only CM Saini’s name was included in the list. The party also gave key roles to state BJP leaders O.P. Dhankar and Captain Abhimanyu, putting them in charge of campaigns in Assam and Delhi respectively, but there was no such role for Bishnoi.
Speaking to ThePrint, Sanjay Sharma, state spokesperson of the BJP, said Bishnoi was a senior member of the party and would remain so.
“The party selects its candidates after a thorough survey. However, people will see for themselves that in Ranjit Chautala’s victory, Bishnoi will play a vital role. The party assigns roles of star campaigners and in-charges based on several factors. Everyone cannot fit in everywhere,” Sharma said.
The BJP leader added that Bhavya Bishnoi is a young MLA, and the party would utilise his services wherever suitable. “After all, only 13 MLAs can be accommodated as ministers in Haryana,” he said. Bhavya Bishnoi was present at the event for Chautala that his father skipped Thursday.
ThePrint tried to reach Kuldeep Bishnoi for comment over the telephone. This article will be updated when he responds.
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Son of ‘politics PhD’, brother of ‘Chand Mohammed’
Bishnoi is the younger of the two sons of Bhajan Lal, Haryana’s longest-serving CM — he held the post from June 1979 to July 1986, and again from March 1991 to May 1996. Bhajan Lal had a reputation for mastery of the political game, and would even announce at rallies that he was a “PhD in politics”.
Bishnoi’s elder brother Chander Mohan, a former deputy CM and four-time MLA from Panchkula, is with the Congress. However, his political career saw a downslide after he was embroiled in a controversy in 2008. Then a sitting deputy CM in the Bhupinder Singh Hooda cabinet — and already married — he converted to Islam so he could “marry” former Haryana assistant advocate general Anuradha Bali, who herself converted. He became “Chand Mohammed” and she became “Fiza”.
While Mohan has always remained with the Congress, Kuldeep Bishnoi launched his Haryana Janhit Congress in 2007, contested the 2014 parliamentary polls in alliance with the BJP, merged his party into the Congress again in 2016, and finally joined the BJP in 2022.
Bishnoi won the Hisar parliamentary seat in a 2011 bypoll — held after the death of his father, who had won the seat in 2009 — only to lose it to Dushyant Chautala (then with the Indian National Lok Dal) in 2014.
Krishan Bishnoi, a BJP leader and executive committee member of the Bishnoi Sabha, a community association, in Hisar, sees nothing unusual in the party denying Kuldeep Bishnoi the ticket and not including him in the list of star campaigners for Rajasthan. He emphasised that winnability is the “most important” criterion for the BJP in these polls.
He added: “Kuldeep Bishnoi contested from Hisar in 2014 when his Haryana Janhit Congress had an alliance with the BJP and people across the country voted to bring Narendra Modi to power. But he still lost that election. In 2019, his son Bhavya Bishnoi remained in third position and polled merely 15.6 percent of the votes against 51.04 percent polled by the winning candidate, Brijendra Singh of the BJP. The Jat community dominates in the Hisar seat but in the past two elections, it was noticed that people from this community were against Bishnoi.”
“On the contrary, Ranjit Singh Chautala is a Jat leader and is former deputy PM Devi Lal’s son. He has been regularly keeping in touch with Hisar voters by holding periodic grievance redressal meetings. He is definitely a better candidate,” he said.
Bishnoi community politics
According to Krishan Bishnoi, although the BJP had appointed Kuldeep Bishnoi co-incharge for Rajasthan, the three Bishnoi candidates the BJP fielded in the state assembly elections — Biharilal Bishnoi from Nokha, Pabba Ram Bishnoi from Phalodi and Krishan Kumar Bishnoi (now, a minister in the Rajasthan government) from Gudha Malani — were not too happy with this.
Biharilal Bishnoi eventually lost the election while Pabba Ram Bishnoi and Krishan Kumar Bishnoi won.
“The Akhil Bhartiya Bishnoi Sabha has its headquarters at Mukam in Rajasthan’s Bikaner district, which is also the biggest pilgrimage centre for the Bishnoi community. Earlier, Chaudhary Bhajan Lal ji used to be its patron and now Kuldeep Bishnoi occupies that position. Devender Budiya, handpicked by Kuldeep Bishnoi, is the president of the sabha, but a group in the community is opposed to Budiya. The BJP candidates from the Bishnoi community were wary that because of Kuldeep Bishnoi’s campaign, the section opposed to Budiya could go against them,” said Krishan Bishnoi.
However, Pabba Ram Bishnoi, the BJP MLA from Phalodi in Rajasthan, said that it would have been good had Kuldeep Bishnoi been given a responsibility in Rajasthan but now, it doesn’t make any difference that he hasn’t.
“Every worker in our party is eventually working for one single objective and that is to strengthen the hands of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who in turn is strengthening Maa Bharati (mother India). Even if I am not given any responsibility, ye Pabba Ram naam ke prani apne track se nahi chukega (this individual named Pabba Ram will never deviate from his track),” the Rajasthan MLA said when contacted by ThePrint Saturday.
He said that the responsibility of the Akhil Bhartiya Bishnoi Mahasabha is different from membership of the party as people from all political parties share the Mahasabha platform.
(Edited by Rohan Manoj)
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