GURGAON
India’s ruling Congress party has been forced to look around for a formidable candidate to field from the Gurgaon Lok Sabha seat of Haryana after three-time MP Rao Inderjit Singh quit the party last month.
Singh has since joined the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is set to field him from Gurgaon.
The Congress party not only has to find someone who can challenge Singh but run against the popular Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Yogendra Yadav whose candidature has already been confirmed by AAP.
The possible choice for the Congress party has got narrowed down to Haryana’s power minister Captain Ajay Singh Yadav and his son Chiranjeev Rao particularly, after popular film star Sharmila Tagore declined the party’s offer to enter active politics and contest the Gurgaon seat.
If Yadav, 55, has the experience and political maturity, then his son Chiranjeev, 27, has youth and exuberance as his assets, particularly in view of the Congress party vice-president’s decision to give a fair share of nominations to the youth.
Chiranjeev is more famously known as the son-in-law of the former Bihar chief ministersLalu Prasad Yadav and Rabri Devi, being married to their sixth daughter Anushka.
Sandwiched between a famous father and father-in-law, Chiranjeev does not feel suffocated and terms it as an advantage. “I have got inspiration at home. I can look up to my father at state level and at my father-in-law at the national level who is like a father figure to me. I don’t have to look for an icon figure outside,” Chiranjeev said while insisting he has his own identity as a politician.
He has the record of being the youngest elected state president of the youth wing of the Congress party. He once held the post of secretary of the National Students Union of India, the youth wing of the party, serving as one of the general secretaries of the Youth Congress in Haryana before being elected its president in 2010, at the age of 24, when Rahul Gandhi started the process of strengthening intra-party democracy by calling for elections for various posts.
This has given him hopes that his candidature would stand in good stead when the central leadership of the party gets down to naming their Gurgaon candidate.
Being married into a political family does not faze him as he was three when his father contested and won his first election in 1989. According to him, it is an asset to be born in a political family.
“No doubt my father is a popular leader. He has never lost an election, having won Rewari assembly seat six times in a row. But he can only get me the party ticket, but he cannot work for me. It is going to be my work in the public that will get me votes. I know I have to prepare my own destiny in politics,” Chiranjeev said.
His grandfather Rao Abhay Singh was elected state lawmaker in an undivided Punjab when elections were held for the first time in post-independent India.
Asked what he would do if the party’s central leadership overlooks his claim and settles for his father as its candidate for the Gurgaon Lok Sabha seat, Chiranjeev said he would continue to work for the people no matter who becomes the next MP.
He, however, hastened to add that his father has no intentions to enter national politics at this stage while he is not very keen on being in state politics.
The prospect of taking on Rao Inderjit Singh, once considered his father’s political mentor, does not bother him and he has ruled out any challenge from AAP’s Yogendra Yadav.
“Yogendra Yadav is not getting the kind of support he would have expected and everyone knows of what [the] AAP did in Delhi. It is going to be a direct contest between the Congress party and BJP. While someone as senior as Rao Inderjit Singh leaving the party does create a temporary vacuum, he has to remember he is past his prime. Indirectly he has done a [lot of] good for the younger general leaders like me to come up by moving away,” Chiranjeev said.
His apartment in Gurgaon’s posh Residency Greens features a picture of his father and father-in-law together, a telling reminder of his roots, while another wall has picture of Congress party president Sonia Gandhi. At this time, he is joined by his wife Anushka and the topic shifts to Lalu Prasad Yadav.
“I would campaign for my husband and I am sure my father would come here to campaign as well. My father treats him like his own son,” says Anushka, who married Chiranjeev in 2012 at a wedding attended by the who’s who of Indian politics.
“I will definitely invite him to campaign for me. Gurgaon has a significant presence of people from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh and his presence would make a difference,” quips Chiranjeev.
Chiranjeev displayed maturity when asked what he would do if denied nomination by the Congress party and instead is invited by his father-in-law to contest as a nominee of his Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) candidate from Bihar.
“My heart lies in Haryana. My aim is not to become an MP but to work for the people of Gurgaon and Haryana, which I have been doing for so many years now,” Chiranjeev said.
Interestingly, while Lalu Prasad Yadav himself is barred from contesting elections, reports have revealed that his ex-chief minister wife Rabri Devi will contest his Saran seat while the eldest of his nine children Misa Bharti vies for the Patliputra seat which Lalu lost by a narrow margin in 2009.
“Yes my mother will contest from Saran. But my sister contesting the Patliputra seat is not finalised yet. But yes, I would definitely go to campaign and support them. But it would depend on whether my husband is going to contest or not,” Anushka said.
The couple were asked how they reacted when Lalu Prasad Yadav was sent to jail recently in the fodder scam case.
“We did feel sad but then we knew he had done no wrong and would be out soon. We are sure he will come clean in this case soon,” Chiranjeev said.
