kumari shailaja who entered politics with congress at just 25 became a contender for the post of cm

Apart from former Haryana Chief Minister Bhupendra Singh Hooda, Congress’s current MP from Sirsa Lok Sabha seat Kumari Selja is also staking her claim for the post of Chief Minister. In the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections, Kumari Selja had won by more than 2 lakh 68 thousand votes. She had defeated BJP’s Ashok Tanwar in the election. Kumari Selja, who has been a member of Lok Sabha thrice and Rajya Sabha once, started her political career with Congress at the age of just 25.

Seeing the hard work and dedication of Kumari Selja, who was born on 24 September 1962 in the house of Chaudhary Dalbir Singh, living in Hisar, the Congress Party made her the state president in the year 1990. After this, she contested the election for the first time from Sirsa Lok Sabha seat in the year 1991 and won and reached the Parliament. She won again from the same seat in the 1996 Lok Sabha elections and became a minister in the first Narasimha Rao government. For the third time, she became a minister in Manmohan Singh’s government by winning from Ambala Lok Sabha seat in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections.

She has served as a member of the Commonwealth Women’s Parliamentary Steering Committee, Union Minister of State in the Department of Education and Culture in the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Minister of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation and Culture. She was also elected Chairperson of the Commonwealth Consultative Group on Human Settlements (CCGHS). Shailaja has a keen interest in the regulation of air quality, abatement of air pollution and pollution norms for industrial units. She has worked on awareness of the effects of global warming. In Parliament she has raised questions on providing electricity to farmers through renewable energy sources and initiatives to promote renewable energy sources and power generation through them.

Kumari Selja was educated at the Convent of Jesus and Mary School in Delhi. She did her post graduation from Punjab University and then joined the Congress Party. At the beginning of her political career, she worked at the grassroots level for the Congress Party. In this sequence, she became the President of Mahila Congress in the year 1990. In the year 2011, she was issued a notice by the High Court on the application of BS Chahar, a lawyer of Punjab and Haryana High Court, in a case of forgery, criminal intimidation and conspiracy. In politics, Kumari Selja had several clashes with former Chief Minister Bhupendra Singh Hooda in her own party. Even both the leaders have made public statements against each other many times. In the affidavit given while filing nomination in the year 2024, she had declared her total assets to be around 42 crores.