Days after Naveen Jindal quit the Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has fielded him from the Kurukshetra Lok Sabha seat in Haryana. Mr Jindal, the youngest son of industrialist Om Prakash Jindal, has been a two-time Congress MP from the same constituency. He will face Aam Aadmi Party’s Sushil Gupta, who will be representing the INDIA bloc.
Here are some facts about Naveen Jindal:
1. Naveen Jindal was born on March 9, 1970, in Hisar to Om Prakash Jindal and Savitri Jindal. He attended Delhi Public School in Hisar before graduating in commerce from Delhi University’s Hans Raj College in 1990. He received his MBA degree from the University of Texas at Dallas in 1992.
2. Mr Jindal’s political journey began in the early 1990s during his time at the University of Texas. An active participant in politics on campus, Mr Jindal also became the president of the students’ union.
3. In 2004, he contested his maiden Lok Sabha elections on a Congress ticket from the Kurukshetra constituency. He retained the seat in 2009 when the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) returned to power. In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, when a BJP wave swept the country, Mr Jindal lost his seat. He wasn’t fielded by the Congress in 2019.
4. Naveen Jindal is the Chairman of Jindal Steel and Power Limited. While filing the nomination papers for the 2014 polls, Mr Jindal declared assets of around Rs 300 crore. His mother Savitri Jindal, who is the chairperson of the OP Jindal Group, is India’s richest woman with a net worth of $29.6 billion, according to the the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
5. Naveen Jindal has been an advocate for the right of all Indians to proudly display the national flag. He filed a writ petition, saying the country’s flag code curtailed the citizens’ right to freedom of expression. The Delhi High Court ruled in his favour and the decision was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2004.
