The Aam Aadmi Party on Wednesday named former World Wrestling Entertainment star Kavita Dalal as its candidate from the Julana constituency in the upcoming Haryana Assembly polls, reported The Indian Express. Dalal will face off against Olympian wrestler Vinesh Phogat, who is contesting on a Congress ticket.

The Aam Aadmi Party fielded candidates for all 90 Assembly seats in the state after talks of an alliance with the Congress failed.

The Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party are constituents of the Opposition INDIA bloc that was formed ahead of the Lok Sabha elections to take on the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance. They remain opponents in Punjab and Delhi.

Haryana will head for the polls on October 5. The counting of votes will take place on October 8, alongside that of the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly elections. Thursday is the last day for candidates to file their nomination papers.

After her nomination, 37-year-old Dalal, who became the first Indian woman to join World Wrestling Entertainment in 2017, expressed respect for Phogat, who she said had made a name for India on the global stage.

“Now, she is a political candidate in the Assembly polls,” Dalal told The Indian Express. “My fight will not be against Vinesh but against the difficulties people are facing in the Julana constituency.”

Dalal was born into a family of farmers in Malvi village in Julana tehsil, in Haryana’s Jind district, in 1986.

In 2016, she won a gold medal in weightlifting at the South Asian Games.

In 2017, she joined a wrestling academy run by former World Wrestling Entertainment performer Dalip Singh Rana, who is popularly known as The Great Khali.

In April 2017, Dalal participated in the World Wrestling Entertainment tryouts in Dubai. Later that year, she competed in promotion’s Mae Young Classic in the United States before signing a World Wrestling Entertainment contract and participating in its WrestleMania and WWE Evolution franchises.

Dalal joined the Aam Aadmi Party in 2022.

The Aam Aadmi Party on Thursday released its final list of three candidates for the Haryana Assembly polls.

The Congress on Thursday also released the names of seven more candidates for the election. It has so far announced names for 88 of the state’s 90 Assembly constituencies.

Also read: Why the Congress and AAP failed to forge an alliance in Haryana