INLD’s Zakir runs hard to win after falling short last time

GURGAON: The Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) candidate from Gurgaon, Zakir Hussain, is the heir to a political family whose roots in this region go back at least two generations. Hussain’s grandfather, Mohammad Yaseen Khan became a member of the Punjab legislative assembly in 1926, when elections were held in British India.
Decades later, the political baton was passed to the next generation.Tayyab Hussain, Zakir’s father, was twice elected as MP — from Gurgaon in 1971, and Faridabad in 1980 – besides winning assembly seats from Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan in the years to come.
Hussain, 52, will now be aiming to follow the footsteps of his forebears. “My family has been serving the people for decades. My grandfather was an MLA for 40 years, and my father became a minister when he was just under 26 years of age and was the only politician in the country to have been a minister in three separate states,” said Hussain, who is also the president of the Mewat Education Board.
Hussain himself has been elected MLA twice from Tauru, as an Independent in 1991 and on a Congress ticket in 2000. During the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, Hussain contested from Gurgaon on a BSP ticket but failed to make an impact, losing to the then-Congress candidate Rao Inderjit Singh. “I was the runner up in the last election. This time, I hope to get a clear majority,” Hussain said.
Party-hopping is the usual way forward for a career-politician in Haryana, as long as the faithful vote banks are still in place. “I joined the INLD last year, and it was not to contest the LS polls. I did it to better serve the people of this region,” Hussain said.
He called Om Prakash Chautala’s arrest a ‘conspiracy hatched by the Congress.’ “In Gurgaon, development started back in 2000, when Chautala was the CM. The district will be better off when he comes back to power, and I get elected as the MP,” he said.