JJP's Dushyant Chautala enters from Uchana Kalan in Haryana assembly polls

Chandigarh: The Jannayak Janta Party on Thursday announced names of 35 candidates for the upcoming Haryana assembly polls. According to the list, party leader Dushyant Chautala will fight the elections from the Uchana Kalana segment and once again take on BJP's sitting MLA Prem Lata.

Dushyant's mother and Dabwali MLA Naina Chautala have been shifted to the Badhra constituency in Charkhi Dadri district, where she will take on BJP incumbent Sukhwinder Sheoran and Congress' Ranbir Mahendra.

If Naina had been fielded from Dabwali, she would have locked horns with Aditya Devilal, a grandson of former deputy prime minister Devi Lal. He has been fielded by the BJP and the JJP's move to shift their candidate appears to have been taken to avoid a split in votes.

Naina's name was announced by the JJP in the fifth list of candidates released by the party on Thursday evening. Earlier in the day, the party announced 30 candidates. Dushyant, a former MP from Hisar will take on Prem Lata, who had defeated him from the constituency by a margin of over 7,000 votes in the 2014 assembly polls.

The assembly elections in Haryana will take place on October 21. The last day for filing nominations is October 4. The final results will be declared on October 24. Uchana Kalan in Jind district has been a bastion of former Union minister Birender Singh, who earlier represented the seat five times. Singh's wife Prem Lata, a sitting MLA, was re-nominated by the BJP for the assembly elections. Lata had defeated Dushyant in the 2014 polls when he had entered into the fray despite being a sitting MP of the Indian National Lok Dal from Hisar.

Dushyant also tasted defeat at the hands of bureaucrat-turned-politician Brijendra Singh of the BJP in the Lok Sabha polls from Hisar this year. Brijendra is the son of Prem Lata and Birender Singh, who is at present a Rajya Sabha MP. So fierce has been the political rivalry between Birender Singh and the Chautala family that Dushyant's grandfather and former Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala had shifted to Uchana Kalan in 2009 when the Narwana seat in Jind was declared reserved after a delimitation exercise.

In 2009, O P Chautala, who is INLD president, had defeated Birender Singh from Uchana Kalan by a narrow margin of 621 votes. Both Dushyant and Birender Singh come from prominent Jat families of the state and Jind district is considered the political heartland of Haryana. In the list of the 30 candidates released earlier in the day, the JJP also named former BSF jawan Tej Bahadur Yadav, who was dismissed in 2017 after he posted a video complaining about the quality of food being served to soldiers.

He has been fielded from Karnal to take on Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar. Among other candidates whose names were announced by the JJP is former MLA Arjun Singh, who has been fielded from Jagadhri. On Tuesday, the party had released its third list naming 20 candidates. So far, the party has announced 77 candidates. On September 29, the JJP had announced 15 candidates and in its first list on September 13, names of seven candidates were announced. The JJP, which came into existence after a split in the INLD following a feud within the Chautala clan, is contesting the polls independently.