Sirsa/Fatehabad, June 4 (HS). Congress candidate Kumari Selja has won from Sirsa parliamentary constituency, which is considered to be the hot seat of Haryana in the Lok Sabha elections. Selja has won a spectacular victory by defeating BJP candidate Dr. Ashok Tanwar by a huge margin of about 2.25 lakh 67 thousand 467 votes. Selja has become Congress MP from Sirsa for the third time.
Selja is the daughter of former Congress MP and Dalit leader Dalbir Singh. Dalbir has been an MP from Sirsa three times. Selja has earlier been an MP from Sirsa parliamentary constituency in 1990 and 1996. She was the Minister of State for Education and Culture in the government of former Prime Minister Narasimha Rao. She represented the Ambala Lok Sabha constituency in the 2004 general elections and later became a Union Minister of State. Selja was very close to the Gandhi family from the very beginning and remained active in the central politics of the Congress.
Selja contested the 2019 general elections from Ambala but lost. She then returned to state politics and was elected president of the Congress party's Haryana unit later that year. She was also a member of the Rajya Sabha from 2014 to 2020.
Selja's closest rival Dr Ashok Tanwar has also been a Member of Parliament from Sirsa on a Congress ticket. He had left the Congress due to disputes with former Chief Minister Bhupendra Singh. After this, he joined TMC. Some time ago, he left the Aam Aadmi Party and joined the BJP.