Chandigarh, October 22
Haryana Janhit Partry (BL) supremo Kuldeep Bishnoi with his five MLAs, along with seven Independents, had the last laugh as the two big parties, the Congress (40) and the Indian National Lok Dal (31), scrambled for their support.
Hectic lobbying began as soon as the leads started coming in during the day, what with both parties staking their claim to form the next government. The Congress claiming so on grounds that it is the single-largest party while the INLD maintaining that the people’s verdict is in favour of the Opposition,
By evening, almost every party was trying to mend burnt bridges and open new communication channels with their rebels as also the others, seeking their support. HJC supremo Bishnoi, a former Congressman himself, said on the phone from Hisar that he was slated to have a meeting with all his party MLAs tomorrow where the party would decide where it wanted to go.
“We may have got fewer seats than our expectations but we are still in the driver’s seat. We are keeping our options open. Let us see which way the poll wind blows and who comes to power,” Bishnoi said.
Among the Independents who have been elected to the assembly are “unaligned” Sultan Jadola from Pundri, who was chosen as a candidate of
the panchayat and won with a margin of 4,051 votes, and Om Prakash Jain from Panipat (rural), who supported the INLD in the government in 1999 and bagged a ministerial berth, is said to be already in Delhi. Sources said just before this assembly elections, he had approached the Congress for the ticket. He decided to contest as an Independent after the party ticket went to veteran leader Prasani Devi.
Other Independent MLAs - Kiran Choudhry loyalist Praladh Singh from Fatehabad and MDLR Airlines chairman Gopal Kanda, who was inclined towards Chautala in the last election, went “missing” right after they won the election. Gurgaon’s newly elected MLA Sukhbeer Kataria, an INLD rebel, and Faridabad’s Shiv Charan Tezpal and Jaleb Khan from Hathin, both Congress rebels, remained “unreachable” on their mobiles and in their constituencies throughout the evening.
Sources said the Shiromani Akali Dal, which had hardly any stakes in Haryana and had won its first seat in Kalanwali in Sirsa, too, had jumped into the horse-trading business to secure support for its alliance partner, the INLD.
