Congress fields actor Raj Babbar from Gurugram against BJP’s Rao Inderjit Singh

The congress party which is contesting 9 lok sabha seats out of 10 in Haryana, finally released the name of its candidate for the Gurugram Lok Sabha seat. Sidelining the senior party leader Capt. Ajay Yadav congress picked senior actor Raj Babbar for the Gurgaon seat. This is the first time the Congress has nominated a candidate who is not a member of the Yadav community, which has a considerable following and influence in south Haryana since Gurgaon was divided into a Lok Sabha seat in 2008. The change from the traditional selection procedure signifies a change in Congress's approach to the constituency. The choice of a non-Yadav candidate for the nomination indicates that the party is looking at wooing the urban voters and influencing the other castes in the region.

While Raj babbar's name was making rounds for many days in the political circles of the state, the political pundits declared Raj babbar as the parachute candidate as soon as his name was cleared for the gurugram seat. Notably, Raj Babbar spent the majority part of his political life in Uttar Pradesh. Raj Babbar has earlier served as Lok Sabha MP thrice and Rajya Sabha member twice. Having seen the highs and lows of his political life in UP’s Agra, Babbar joined the Congress party in 2008 and contested for the party from Fatehpur Sikri in 2009 after Agra became a reserved seat for Scheduled Castes. Although Babbar's career was not at its peak, he was still very much in it as the Congress asked him to run in a by-election from the Firozabad seat after Akhilesh Yadav, the sitting MP, decided to step down. Dimple Yadav, his wife, also ran in the byelection, but Babbar made headlines when he defeated Dimple. He also served as the former chief of Congress’ UP unit.

After 2009, Babbar faced a landslide defeat during the Modi wave in 2014 when Babbar chose to contest against General Rtd. VK Singh lost by about 5 lakh votes. After the 2014 defeat, Raj Babbar again contested the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. He was chosen from Moradabad but returned to Fatehpur Sikri to compete. Raj Kumar Chahar, the BJP candidate, defeated Babbar handily by receiving more than 4 lakh votes. Interestingly, Raj Babbar, who has been fielded from Gurgaon, was also a signatory to the letter written by the G-23 leaders group to then Congress president Sonia Gandhi in 2020. Cut to 2024, Raj Babbar’s name started making rounds once again after the party fielded Rao Dan Singh the only Yadav candidate for the Mahendargarh-Bhiwani seat.

The trusted party sources also revealed that behind Raj Babbar’s candidature from Gurugram was his close relationship with the Hooda clan. As the senior Hooda played a decisive role in the distribution of tickets in Haryana, Capt Ajay Yadav along with Shruti Chaudhary and Rao Birender Singh faced the wrath of being in opposite camps of Hooda.  Nonetheless, Babbar will face Rao Inderjit Singh, the most popular political face of South Haryana in less than 25 days.

While Rao Inderjit’s campaign started 3 months ago, Raj Babbar finally landed in the city after the declaration of his name. As Raj Babbar will start catering to the Punjabi votes in the urban areas of the Gurugram parliamentary constituency, people in the political circles have already started estimating the margin of Rao Inderjit’s win. Thus, it won’t be wrong to say that this will be Raj Babbar’s life's toughest contest to date.