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Haryana byelection: Bhavya Bishnoi is BJP candidate for Adampur seat
The Adampur assembly byelection was necessitated after Bhavya’s father Kuldeep Bishnoi quit the Congress and joined the BJP after voting against Cong candidate Ajay Maken in the Rajya Sabha elections in June
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday named Bhavya Bishnoi, the son of former Congress MLA Kuldeep Bishnoi who joined the BJP in August, as its candidate for the Adampur assembly byelection in Haryana. Voting will be held on November 3 and the result will be declared on November 6.
Also read: BJP turncoat Satinder Singh is AAP’s candidate for Adampur bypoll
29-year-old Bhavya is the grandson of former Haryana chief minister and late Congress leader Bhajan Lal. Bhavya had contested as the Congress nominee from the Hisar parliamentary seat in the 2019 elections but forfeited his security deposit. He lost to Brijendra Singh of the BJP.
Bhavya completed M.Sc from St Antony College, University of Oxford, in 2015-16.
The Adampur assembly byelection was necessitated after Bhavya’s father Kuldeep Bishnoi quit the Congress and joined the BJP. Bishnoi had defeated BJP’s Sonali Phogat by about 29,000 votes in the last assembly elections. Phogat, who also considered herself a contender for the BJP’s Adampur constituency, was found dead in a Goa hotel in August.
Bishnoi had voted against Congress candidate Ajay Maken in the Rajya Sabha elections in June and resigned from Adampur assembly constituency on August 3.
Bid to retain home turf
Bishnoi had been pitching for Bhavya’s candidature since he joined the BJP.
Two days ago, Bishnoi said voters of Adampur wanted to see Bhavya as their MLA and he himself wanted to shift to national politics.
Adampur is the home turf of the Bhajan Lal family and it has retained this assembly seat for 55 years.
In 2011, Bhavya’s mother Renuka Bishnoi had contested the by-election from Adampur after Bishnoi resigned as MLA and fought the Hisar parliamentary elections. She won with a thumping majority.
The constituency has about 1.7 lakh voters, including 79,000 women.
Bishnoi, who had merged his Haryana Janhit Congress (BL) with the Congress before the 2019 assembly elections, won as a Congress candidate securing 63,693 votes, about 51% of the polled votes.
AAP pitches ex-BJP leader, Cong yet to declare candidate
On Friday, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had announced the candidature of former BJP leader SatinderSingh as its nominee for the November 3 bypoll.
On September 7, Satinder Singh quit the BJP and joined the Aam Aadmi Party. He was the district in-charge of the Bharatiya Kisan Morcha, the BJP’s farmer unit in Sirsa and Rohtak.
He had joined the BJP in the 2019 assembly elections after the Congress denied him the ticket. In 2014, he contested from Adampur constituency as a Congress candidate and lost to Bishnoi.
The main opposition Congress in the state is yet to announce its nominee.
