With each passing day, aspirants for the Congress tickets for the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections in Haryana are getting more anxious. It is the intense pressure and the pulls and pressures on the party high command from different quarters that has made the final selection of the party candidate for the 10 Parliamentary seats in the state so difficult.

On at least four seats in the state where the sitting MPs are likely to be repeated, the pressure for ticket is relatively less.These seats are Rohtak Parliamentary constituency, where the candidature of Deepinder Hooda is almost certain; the reserved seat of Ambala where Selja is likely to be renominated; Kurukshetra, where Navin Jindal is likely to be repeated, and Faridabad, where sitting MP Avtar Singh Bhadana may get the party’s nod.

However, the most sought after seats by the partymen today are those of Sonepat, Karnal and Bhiwani-Mahendergarh and, to some extent, Gurgaon. The Sonepat seat is the only one that the Congress failed to bag in the Lok Sabha elections of 2004. It was BJP’s Kishan Singh Sangwan who defied the then Congress wave to win the seat. But this time, the Congress considers the Sonepat seat to be the easiest one to win.

No wonder, there are a whole lot of Congress leaders, including Finance Minister Birender Singh, Power Minister Randeep Singh Surjewala and Congress Women’s Wing leader Krishna Gehlot, who are in the race for the ticket. A section of Congressmen are now demanding that the Sonepat seat must be given to Asha Hooda, wife of Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda. “Asha Hooda will be the best bet among Congressmen. She will win by a record margin, provided she gets the party ticket,’’ says Pawan Jain, media convenor of the Haryana Pradesh Congress Committee.

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