Haryana Assembly polls: BJP meeting to finalise candidates on Sep 29

Chandigarh, Sep 25: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will hold a Parliamentary Board Meeting on September 29 to finalise the list of candidates for the upcoming Haryana assembly elections.

The election commission on Saturday announced the schedule for the assembly election in Haryana and Maharashtra. October 4 is the last date to filing nomination. Polling for 90 seats of Haryana will take place on October 21, while results will be out on October 24.

"The meeting of the central election committee of the BJP is expected after Prime Minister Narendra Modi returns from his US visit," reports quoted a BJP leader as saying.

In Haryana, Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar-led BJP is hoping to retain power. They are facing the Congress, led by former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and Kumari Selja.

BJP will also face regional parties like the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) and the Jannayak Janta Party (JJP). It is unclear if an opposition alliance will come up in the state.

With the party winning all 10 seats in Haryana during the Lok Sabha elections 2019, the BJP seems confident of retaining Haryana. Haryana assembly has 90 seats and the BJP won 47 in 2014 and formed the government. The BJP ended 10 years rule of the Congress in 2014. What will work more in favour of the BJP is that the Congress is a divided house in the state. While a majority of its 15 MLAs are with Hooda, there are other power centres too.

In the October 2014 assembly polls, BJP was propelled to power in Haryana for the first time on its own after it recorded a dramatic surge in vote share that saw its tally zooming from four in 2009 to 47 in 2014 in the backdrop of a strong Modi wave. Later, it won one more seat in the bypoll to the Jind assembly seat. BJP's vote share had rocketed to 33.2 per cent from a meager 9.05 per cent in 2009 assembly polls. It had been playing the second fiddle to regional parties, including INLD, in Haryana until then. In the outgoing assembly, INLD has 19 legislators, but two of its MLAs died and several switched over to BJP. Congress has a strength of 17, BSP one, independents five and SAD has one member.