Rajbir Singh Lala, younger brother of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Dharambir Singh, and Jannayak Janata Party (JJP) MLA from Shahbad Ram Karan Kala are among the 2,556 applicants for Congress tickets for the upcoming Haryana assembly elections.
Also on the list are at least two retired district court judges, as well as former Indian Administrative Service and Police Service officers.
Haryana has 90 assembly seats. The Election Commission of India (ECI) announced Friday that the state will vote in a single phase on 1 October, and counting of votes will take place on 4 October.
In the 52-page list of Congress applicants, accessed by ThePrint, nearly a dozen are retired civil servants, police officers and judges.
Rajbir Singh Lala wishes to stake his claim to Haryana’s Tosham assembly seat, where his brother started his political career by defeating then chief minister Bansi Lal in 1987.
Three-time MP from Bhiwani-Mahendragarh, Dharambir had left the Congress to join the BJP ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. Before this, in 1987, he was elected the MLA of Tosham as a candidate of Devi Lal’s Lok Dal, defeating Bansi Lal. He won this seat again in 2000 by defeating Bansi Lal’s son, Surender Singh, who went on to join the Congress ahead of the 2005 assembly polls.