ROHTAK/HISAR: Divyanshu Budhiraja was a college-going kid when RSS ideologue Manohar Lal Khattar, 70, first became Haryana’s chief minister in 2014. But make no mistake: Divyanshu, 30, who is taking on Khattar, a stalwart in the Karnal constituency, is giving his veteran rival a tougher time than he ever has before.
In the Jat-majority Hisar constituency, about 200 km from Karnal, a battle of prestige is being waged among Chautala bahus (daughters-in-law).
Interestingly, this constituency has not had a woman candidate in decades.
Not far from Rohtak, a lot is at stake for Congress strongman and former prime minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, whose son Deepender is taking on the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Arvind Sharma head-to-head. With temperatures exceeding 47 degrees in some areas and candidates struggling, the Bharatiya Janata Party is finding it hard to maintain its 10-10 vote margin. The Bharatiya Janata Party, which ran unopposed in 2019, is hoping only to win a few seats in the battleground state of Haryana.
In Karnal, where non-Jat Punjabis make up a large majority, Khattar’s procession stops at short breaks to talk to voters. He says he will return if he wins a seat and fulfil all his promises. “This is the two-wheeled engine sarkar that will help you all,” he shouts.
However, the anti-incumbency sentiment against him is palpable and his arch rival, Divyanshu of the Bharatiya Janata Party, has capitalised on it, saying Khattar was “removed” from the position of Chief Minister just before the elections, attributing it to his poor performance and failure.Interestingly, Khattar was nominated as the Bharatiya Janata Party candidate quite early on, to unseat the incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party MP Sanjay Bhatia in the Karnal seat, who had won the seat by a huge margin of over 600,000 votes last time.
By fielding Divyanshu, president of the Haryana Youth Congress, for the first time, the party is looking to split the non-Jat and Punjabi votes targeted by Khattar. Both Divyanshu and Khattar are outsiders and belong to the Punjabi tribe. The Lor tribe vote in the constituency is also heading for splitting. With Hooda dominating the Jat votes, the Congress could also benefit from Jat voters in the region. In 2019, the BJP won 70% of the votes in Karnal constituency, with the Congress Party trailing behind with only around 20%. Khattar has a clear lead in Karnal for now, despite unfavourable circumstances for the BJP, including the farmers’ revolt against the saffron party.
The Rohtak Lok Sabha seat contest will determine the popularity of Bhupinder Singh Hooda, whose son Deepinder is up against BJP incumbent MP Arvind Sharma. Rohtak has 660,000 Jat voters. The Indian National Congress has won the seat 11 times out of 18 elections.
But Deepinder lost to Arvind Sharma in 2019. Hooda’s challenge this time in Rohtak will be to hold sway in areas such as Kosri, which is dominated by Ahir tribesmen who voted against him last time.
Agnivelu is an issue in the Haryana elections and Deepinder said the BJP candidate has remained callously silent on the issue, the humiliation of Olympic wrestlers, farmers’ unrest and other public issues.
In Hisar, another Jat-dominated constituency, the elder Chautala faction is facing off in the polls – JJP’s Naina Chautala, daughter-in-law of former chief minister Om Prakash Chautala, and INLD’s Sunaina Chautala, daughter-in-law of his brother, the late Pratap Chautala.
It’s a prestige battle for two women contesting in Hisar constituency for the first time in decades, but it’s also a head-to-head contest between the BJP’s Ranjit Chautala and Jai Prakash, the Congress candidate who has won the seat three times since 1989.
Published May 23, 2024 22:25 IST
