Arvind Kumar Sharma For Rohtak: Party Hopper Is Seeking Fourth Term In Lok Sabha Polls

Dr Arvind Kumar Sharma is the sitting MP and BJP candidate in Haryana’s Rohtak constituency. Sharma is seeking his fourth term in Lok Sabha this year. The incumbent MP won the Rohtak seat in the 2019 general elections on a BJP ticket and in the 2004 and 2009 elections on a Congress ticket in Karnal constituency. In 2019, Sharma won the seat by a margin of 7,503 votes against Deepender Singh Hooda, the son of former Congress Chief Minister of State Bhupinder Singh Hooda.

Sharma has changed his political party three times, in the past three general elections. The two-term Congress MP and senior leader of the party  jumped to the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in March 2014, ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. He had been declared the chief ministerial candidate by BSP supremo Mayawati. But Sharma lost both seats he contested, while the BSP shrank to one seat in the state. Five years later, in 2019, Sharma joined the saffron party ahead of the general election, which led him to reward a party ticket from the Rohtak seat. Notably, Sharma represented Sonipat Lok Sabha constituency as an independent in 1996.

Sharma was born in 1962 and started his political career after the completion of his career in medical practice. He completed his graduation with a Bachelor of Dental Surgery from Gujrat University, Ahmedabad, and a Master of Dental Surgery from Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak.

This year, Sharma may have to challenge anti-incumbency due to farmer protests that occurred in his state. On October 20, 2021, he faced protests by farm activists while he was on the way to Rohtak. Protests using black flags and blocking MP’s cavalcade happened in the same incident. The closest contest in the 2019 election was against Deepender Singh Hooda, which resulted in a narrow win for Sharma, and it increased Congress” confidence in the upcoming polls. Rohtak and Sonipath were the best-performing constituencies for Congress, losing both seats just by a narrow margin. BJP and Sharma”s electoral campaigns appeal to voters mainly through the ‘Modi factor’.

All 10 parliamentary seats in Haryana, including Rohtak, will go to the polls in phase 6 on May 25.

(This story is part of a Timeline. internship project.)