Steel magnate Naveen Jindal steals one past Congress, quits, fielded by BJP within hours

A two-time Congress MP from Haryana’s Kurukshetra, Naveen Jindal on Sunday pulled a surprise as he quit the Congress and moved to the BJP and was immediately fielded from the constituency by the ruling party.

Jindal, 54, is the youngest child of former Haryana minister Savitri Jindal, among the richest women in the country, and the late Om Prakash Jindal who was a minister in Haryana. Om Prakash set up the Jindal empire from Hisar and was elected to the Assembly from the area. Om Prakash, who was a Cabinet minister in the Bhupinder Singh Hooda government, died when his private helicopter crashed near Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh on March 31, 2005.

Three days ago, Naveen, the chairperson of Jindal Steel and Power, assumed charge as the President of the Indian Steel Association. The industrialist, whose brothers Prithviraj, Sajjan, and Ratan also run steel and power companies, is known for his long legal battle that resulted in the courts allowing the right to display the Tricolour on all days of the year for all Indians.

In Kurukshetra, Naveen Jindal will take on AAP candidate and former Rajya Sabha MP Sushil Gupta. The AAP is contesting the Lok Sabha elections in Haryana in an alliance with Congress and was given Kurukshetra.

As the Congress candidate, Naveen Jindal won Kurukshetra twice, in 2004 and 2009. However, he lost to the BJP’s Raj Kumar Saini in 2014. Last time, the BJP’s Nayab Singh Saini, currently the Haryana Chief Minister, defeated the Congress’s Nirmal Singh by more than three lakh votes.

Notably, in 2014, Jindal defeated the INLD’s Abhay Singh Chautala by nearly 1.3 lakh votes. Abhay’s son Arjun Chautala contested the 2019 elections from Kurukshetra but ended a distant fifth.

The other names on the Haryana list