Harbhajan Singh nominated by AAP for Rajya Sabha polls, former India spinner vows to take sports forward

New Delhi, March 21: Former India cricketer Harbhajan Singh has been nominated for Rajya Sabha polls by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Punjab. The Turbanator is amongst the five persons the ruling party in Punjab has nominated for the elections for the Upper House on March 31.

Harbhajan has filed his nomination papers at the Punjab Vidhan Sabha complex in Chandigarh. AAP - which recently came to power in Punjab following an emphatic victory in the Assembly Polls - nominated Lovely Professional University founder Ashok Mittal, AAP MLA Raghav Chadha, IIT Delhi faculty Sandeep Pathak and industrialist Sanjeev Arora as its candidates.

All five candidates are set to be elected to the Upper House of parliament as AAP has won 92 of 117 seats. After filing his papers, the former India off-spinner said he will strive to take sports forward.

Earlier in December last year, Harbhajan retired from all forms of cricket after a journey that lasted for 23 years. The veteran off-spinner, who made his debut against Australia in Bengaluru in 1998, had been out of favour for quite some time. He last played for India in a T20I match against the UAE in Dhaka in 2016 during the Asia Cup.

Harbhajan played 103 Tests for India and picked up 417 wickets, and from 236 ODIs, the Turbanator grabbed 269 wickets. The off-spinner has also represented India in 28 T20Is and took 25 wickets.

Soon after bringing the curtains down on his cricketing career, the cricketer admitted that he is not averse to joining politics. However, he claimed that would like to put in a lot of thought before taking a final decision on such a move.

The speculations of the former cricketer starting a career in politics went rife after cricketer-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu posted a picture with Bhajji on Twitter and captioned it "picture loaded with possibilities".

"Frankly speaking, I don't know what's in store for me. I just want a couple of days to figure out in which direction I would like to move. Yes, I want to give back to society," Harbhajan told PTI in an interview when asked about his future plans.

"If I join politics, how and in what form, I need to figure those things out as main aim is to help people if I at all take the plunge," he added.