BJP selects Sanjay Tandon to fill the Lok Sabha seat from Chandigarh, ousting Kirron Kher

Two-term sitting member of parliament Kirron Kher was dumped by the BJP on Wednesday, and Sanjay Tandon was selected as their candidate for the Chandigarh Lok Sabha seat. Sanjay Tandon, sixty, is the son of Punjabi BJP leader and former Chattisgarh governor Balramji Das Tandon. From 2010 to 2019, the Sector 18 resident held the title of Bharatiya Janata Party Chandigarh president with the longest tenure. Several groups within the Chandigarh BJP, including party officials Sanjay Tandon and former president Arun Sood, were attempting to nominate a “local candidate” and were taken aback by the news. Some even opposed Tandon’s selection for the Chandigarh Lok Sabha. Tandon is the co-leader of the Himachal Pradesh BJP.

Tandon had been attempting to secure a ticket for a while, but in the Lok Sabha election of 2014, the BJP fielded actor-turned-politician Kirron Kher as a parachute candidate in Chandigarh because of internal factionalism. Even though Kher has insisted that she is from Chandigarh and has a home in Sector 8, she has consistently been referred to as a “outsider” by BJP insider organizations. In the 2014 general election, Kher received 1.91 lakh votes, defeating Congress leader Pawan Kumar Bansal, who received 1.21 lakh votes. Gul Panag, the AAP candidate, scored well in Chandigarh, receiving 1.08 lakh votes.

Kirron Kher, who was again nominated by the BJP in 2019, secured 2.31 lakh votes, while Bansal received 1.84 lakh votes. The Aam Aadmi Party’s vote share in 2019 dropped dramatically to just 3% of the total, or 13,781 votes, which went to Harmohan Dhawan. Pawan Bansal served three terms in a row as the Lok Sabha representative for Chandigarh before to 2014.