Former Haryana Chief Minister Bhajan Lal is all set for the battle of the ballots. A veteran leader and nine-time MLA, Bhajan Lal has chosen his home turf, the Hisar parliamentary constituency, to contest as a candidate of the Haryana Janhit Congress.

While his younger son and HJC supremo Kuldeep Bishnoi has decided not to contest the election to “make himself available for campaigning” all over the state, Bhajan Lal, an MLA from Adampur, will face a triangular contest with Congress candidate Jai Prakash and INLD’s Sampat Singh from his seat.

He is the only prominent face in the list of 10 candidates, seven of whom were announced by Bishnoi today.

While party sources maintained that they had attempted to balance all caste equations in the final list, the HJC has decided to field candidates of the category A in Scheduled Caste from the two reserved seats of Ambala (Dalbir Balmiki) and Sirsa (Rajinder Dhanak).

This is contrary to the line toed by other parties, including the Congress, the BJP, the INLD and the BSP which have fielded candidates from Category B of the Scheduled castes, inviting a lot of resentment.

Also, while the Congress is facing the resentment of Punjabis for not giving the party ticket to their candidate and is in damage-control mode after Haryana’s Minister AC Chaudhary resigned from the Cabinet to lodge his protest, the HJC has attempted to cash in on this grouse. The party has fielded Dr Ramesh Chhabra from Karnal and Chander Bhatia from Faridabad, maintaining that voter statistics favour Punjabis from the two seats.

Haryana Agriculture Minister Harmohinder Chatha’s son-in-law Jaswant Singh Cheema, too, has found a place in the HJC ticket list to woo Sikhs.

Party sources said it was unanimously decided that Bishnoi would be the party’s star campaigner and would not limit himself to one constituency alone.

“Also, we want to send out a message that those who have not been given the ticket should rise above self-interest and work for the party,” sources in the HJC said.

Meanwhile, the remaining candidates announced by the Janhit Congress are Rao Narinder Singh (Bhiwani-Mahendragarh), Umesh Sharma (Sonepat), Rajinder Dhanak (Sirsa), former minister Krishan Murti Hooda (Rohtak), former MLA Chander Bhatia (Faridabad) and former minister Rao Narbir Singh (Gurgaon).