Chandigarh: Amidst speculations that he might switch sides to the BJP, senior Congress leader and Adampur MLA Kuldeep Bishnoi again gave a miss to the co-ordination committee meeting of the Congress in Delhi on Saturday.
Bishnoi, who also served as Hisar MP in the past, was also conspicuous by his absence during the first meeting of the committee on Tuesday which was held under the leadership of Haryana Congress in-charge and senior leader Ghulam Nabi Azad.
If reports are to be believed, the three-time MLA is in touch with the BJP leadership, busy bargaining for at least one Lok Sabha seat and four assembly seats for his wife, brother and loyalists. Bishnoi, reportedly want to secure a ticket for his son elder Bhavya, too.
If Kuldeep Bishnoi joins, the saffron party may well field him from Hisar, a seat represented by him in 2011.
Haryana BJP president Subhash Barala, however, rubbished the reports as “media speculations”. He added, “We have not established any contacts or met with Bishnoi”.
Meanwhile, reports also suggest that Bishnoi, who merged his HJC with the Congress in 2016, is probably testing the waters of the grand old party as he hasn’t made his intentions public yet.
Interestingly, Kuldeep’s elder brother and former Haryana deputy chief minister Chander Mohan was spotted at the AICC headquarters in Delhi. “I have directly reached here from Chandigarh, and have no idea why Kuldeep Bhisnoi is not present,” said Chander Mohan, aka Chand Mohammed, when asked about Kuldeep’s absence.
Bishnoi, the son of former chief minister Bhajan Lal, was included in the Congress co-ordination committee which was constituted recently. The committee had former CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda as its chairman, which Bishnoi was opposed to.
The committee was announced last week to bring together the rival factions of the Congress, but was shelved within hours of announcement. Sources say, Bishnoi, who also aspires to become the CM of Haryana, had conveyed his resentment to the high command, prompting the decision.
On Monday, the committee was restored and a day later, its first meeting was held. While all the members of the committee attended the meet in Delhi on Tuesday, Kuldeep Bishnoi skipped it. Kuldeep cited illness for not attending the meet, but sources said all wasn’t well between him and the Congress leadership.
Kuldeep Bishnoi founded Haryana Janhit Congress (HJC) in 2007 after he was ousted from the Congress “anti-party activities”. He had then alleged that then CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda was harming the state’s farmers by promoting special economic zones.
In 2009 Assembly elections, the HJC won six seats in the state, but five of the MLAs defected to the Congress, further souring the relations between him and Hooda.
In 2011, following the death of his father, Bishnoi entered into a truck with the BJP. The alliance successfully fielded him for the Hisar by-election held in October that year. Bishnoi is also known for his close ties with minister of external affairs, Sushma Swaraj.
He again contested as an alliance candidate from Hisar in 2014 but was defeated by Dushyant Chautala, who fought on INLD ticket, by margin of over 30,000 votes.
The alliance fell apart just before the Assembly elections in 2014 with Bishnoi claiming that BJP had failed to keep the alliance conditions.
Kuldeep Bishnoi merged his HJC with the Congress in 2016 after having met Rahul Gandhi who was the Congress vice-president then. He was made a Special Invitee to the Congress Working Committee (CWC) and was a campaigner for the Rajasthan assembly elections in 2018.
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