Olympic medallist Yogeshwar Dutt expresses willingness to contest Haryana Assembly elections

BJP leader and Olympic Medal winning wrestler Yogeshwar Dutt expressed his willingness to contest the upcoming Haryana Assembly elections from the Gohana Assembly Constituency on Friday.

"I have expressed my wish to contest elections to the Chief Minister and the central leadership. I am a sportsperson, and an Olympic medallist, and I have contested elections from BJP earlier also, so I want to get a chance", said Dutt while speaking to Journalists.

He further added that he wants to contest from the Gohana assembly constituency and he has told the same to the leadership. "Now it is the time for elections, so I want to get a chance to contest from Gohana. I can't be certain about the future, but I have expressed my willingness, and I have told the leadership that I want to contest.", he added.

Yogeshwar Dutt, who won an Olympic Medal in the 2012 Olympics was defeated by Congress nominee Indu Raj Narwal in a bypoll for the Assembly seat of Baroda in 2020. Dutt also lost the seat in 2019 to the Congress's three-time winner Krishan Hooda.

The BJP Central Election Committee (CEC) held a crucial meeting on Thursday to discuss the upcoming Haryana Assembly elections. During the meeting, which was chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, discussions were held on all 90 assembly seats in the state. Out of these, candidates for 55 seats have been finalised.

The final decision on the remaining 35 seats will be made in a follow-up meeting today between the Haryana core committee and the BJP President. The party has decided to roll out the candidate names in phases as the election preparations intensify.

The meeting, which took place at the BJP headquarters, was attended by key leaders including BJP National President JP Nadda, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Satya Narayan Jatia, Iqbal Singh Lalpura, K. Laxman, Nayab Singh Saini, Sudha Yadav, Vanathi Srinivasan, Anil Vij, Bhupender Yadav, Biplab Deb, Satish Poonia, Surendra Nagar, and Dharmendra Pradhan.

Voting for 90 seats of the Haryana Assembly elections will be held on October 1. The results will be declared on October 4.