Congress fields Raj Babbar from Gurgaon, Anand Sharma from Kangra

Congress’ Raj Babbar. File. | Photo Credit: PTI

The Congress on April 30 fielded actor-turned-politician Raj Babbar from the Gurgaon Lok Sabha seat in Haryana, and former Union Minister Anand Sharma from Kangra in Himachal Pradesh.

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

Full list of Congress candidates and their constituencies

The Congress has also fielded local Mumbai Congress leader Bhushan Patil from the Mumbai North constituency in Maharashtra. He will take on Union Minister Piyush Goyal from the key seat.

Mr. Sharma, who has been a prominent member of the G23 grouping within the Congress, which raised questions on the party’s leadership, will take on the BJP’s State vice-president Rajiv Bhardwaj from the Kangra seat. The BJP has replaced its sitting MP Kishan Kapoor with Mr. Bhardwaj this time.

This is the first Lok Sabha election that Mr. Sharma will be contesting. In 1982, he had contested the Himachal Pradesh Assembly election from Shimla but lost to the BJP's Daulat Ram Chauhan. He was elected to the Rajya Sabha for the first time in April 1984 and has been a member of the Upper House of Parliament for four terms. He was a Union Minister during the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government under Manmohan Singh and was a deputy leader of the Congress in the Rajya Sabha till he retired in 2022.

Mr. Babbar will take on BJP leader and Union Minister Rao Inderjit Singh from Gurgaon. Mr. Singh has been representing the Gurgaon seat for three consecutive terms. He represented the Mahendragarh Lok Sabha seat in 1998 and 2004 as a Congress MP, and won from Gurgaon in 2009 on a Congress ticket. He then switched over to the BJP and won the seat in 2014 and 2019.

Polling in the Mumbai North constituency will be held on May 20, and in Haryana's Gurgaon on May 25 in the sixth round. Voting in Himachal Pradesh will be held on June 1 in the last phase of ongoing elections.