Gurugram: The Bharatiya Janata Party’s Sirsa MP, Sunita Duggal — a former Indian Revenue Service officer who resigned to join the party in 2014 — took a public dig at ex-CM Manohar Lal Khattar over Ashok Tanwar being given her seat for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, with him present on dais.
The dig, a video of which made it to social media and has been seen by ThePrint, left Khattar trying to salvage the situation by calling Duggal his “bhanji (sister’s daughter)” while campaigning for Tanwar in Sikh-dominated Rori in Sirsa Wednesday.
The video, shows Duggal at the rally, saying in Punjabi, “Mainu ajj ehojiya mahool lag riya hai jiven tussi saare meri farewell party vich baithe ho (To me, the atmosphere today looks as if all of you are attending my farewell party).”
Duggal, a former Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer, left her assistant income tax commissioner post nearly 10 years ago to join the BJP. The video shows her recalling that the Income Tax department had a ritual of throwing farewell parties for retiring officers.
Later, holding Khattar responsible for replacing her with Tanwar, Duggal said, “’Manyog (respectable)’ Manohar Lal ji has decided to field Ashok Tanwar this time. So, it’s our duty to ensure his victory by the biggest margin.”
She also said that the BJP’s top leadership had promised her the Sirsa ticket when she quit her job in 2014, but Khattar had cautioned her of sometimes being denied tickets, which is what happened that year. She went on to contest the Ratia seat in the Haryana assembly polls in 2014 but was defeated, and then successfully contested the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
When Khattar’s turn came Wednesday, he tried to defuse the situation, saying, “All others are addressing Sunita Duggal as ‘behenji (sister)’ but for me, she is my ‘bhanji‘. And, the interesting thing is that the person for whom she has sacrificed her seat (Ashok Tanwar) is my ‘bhanja‘. So, my ‘bhanji‘ has sacrificed her ticket for my ‘bhanja‘,” Khattar said.
“This is exactly like Sanjay Bhatia (the BJP MP from Karnal) sacrificing his seat for me or, as some people say, me sacrificing the CM’s chair for Nayab Singh Saini,” he added.
A senior BJP functionary told The Print that the former CM addressed Duggal and Tanwar as his ‘bhanji‘ and ‘bhanja‘, respectively, because both their mothers were from Rohtak, Khattar’s home district.
Contacted on her phone by ThePrint Thursday, Duggal downplayed her speech and said she was merely narrating the events after she gave up her job. “Even Manohar Lal ji said in his speech that Tanwar is his ‘bhanja‘ (sister’s son), Sunita Duggal is his ‘bhanji‘,” she said.
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Duggal missed Sirsa ticket in 2014, too
At the rally, Duggal said she met Khattar for the first time at former MLA Manish Grover’s Rohtak residence. He had asked her why she wanted to join politics.
“When I told him that the party’s top leadership had assured me of the Sirsa ticket, Khattar told me in a cautionary tone with a smile that I should think thoughtfully because in politics sometimes the jobs go and one doesn’t get a ticket,” she said.
“That’s precisely what happened in 2014 when I lost my job and did not even get the ticket. The Sirsa seat went to Kuldeep Bishnoi’s Haryana Janhit Congress, which was in an alliance (with the BJP),” she said.
She said the party later told her she could place a finger on any assembly constituency and contest from there in the Vidhan Sabha elections in October 2014.
“I chose a seat close to my residence, planning to serve my constituency well after the election. I worked hard there for over three months after the party agreed to give me that seat,” Duggal said.
A Dalit leader and Gurugram resident, Duggal wanted the ticket for the Pataudi seat, reserved for Scheduled Caste leaders.
“However, when the elections came, the local MP (Rao Inderjit Singh) didn’t let me get the ticket. I was asked to contest from Ratia in Fatehabad district. For merely 20 days, I fought hard but lost the election by just 435 votes,” she said.
“In 2019, I contested the Sirsa parliamentary seat; I won that seat by the highest margin so far — 3.1 lakh votes. I worked hard as an MP despite losing over a year to COVID-19. But now, I have neither the job nor the politics,” she said.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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