Lok Sabha polls: Congress fields Raj Babbar from Gurugram, Anand Sharma from Kangra

The Congress on Tuesday named senior leaders Raj Babbar and Anand Sharma in its latest list of candidates for the Lok Sabha elections.

Raj Babbar has been fielded from Haryana's Gurugram, while Sharma has been given a Lok Sabha election ticket from Himachal Pradesh's Kangra. 

Satpal Raizada, a former MLA from Himachal Pradesh's Una, has been fielded by the Congress from the Hamirpur Lok Sabha seat in the state and will contest the general elections against BJP candidate and Union Minister Anurag Thakur.

With this, the Congress has announced candidates for all the nine seats it is contesting in Haryana, which sends 10 members to the Lower House of Parliament.

The Kurukshetra seat is being fought by the Aam Aadmi Party, a constituent of the opposition INDIA bloc, of which the Congress is also a part.

Babbar has been fielded against BJP veteran and Union Minister Rao Inderjit Singh. Voting for all seats in Haryana will take place in the sixth phase, on May 25. 

Having started his political career with the Janata Dal, Babbar was associated with the Samajwadi Party before being suspended from the party in 2006. He joined the Congress and defeated Akhilesh Yadav's wife Dimple in a by-election in Firozabad in 2009. 

In the 2014 general election, Babbar lost to BJP's General VK Singh (retd) from Ghaziabad by about five lakh votes. He contested the 2019 election from Fatehpur Sikri but lost to BJP candidate Raj Kumar Chahar by over 4 lakh votes.

On the other hand, all four seats in Himachal Pradesh will go to polls in the seventh phase on June 1.

In Maharashtra, the grand old party declared Bhushan Patil as candidate from Mumbai North. Earlier, the party wanted Vinod Ghosalkar or his daughter-in- law Tejasvee as a candidate, but they refused to contest on the Congress symbol.

(With agency inputs)