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Varun sails through BJP stronghold of Ambala
Varun’s victory margin might be small, but the grand-old party’s legislator registered his win even in the Naraingarh assembly segment, the home town of chief minister Nayab Saini. Here, the margin with the runner-up and BJP candidate Banto Kataria was 20,906 votes.
One-time MLA Varun Chaudhary, 44, is all set to step into the Parliament after winning the reserved Ambala seat with a margin of 49,036 votes on Tuesday.
Ambala, Haryana’s entry gate, was held earlier by BJP’s Rattan Lal Kataria, who died in 2023. It was also one of the three seats, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi had addressed a poll rally in May. In Yamunanagar district’s Jagadhari, which also comes under the Ambala Lok Sabha constituency, Congress’ national president Mallikarjun Kharge addressed his sole poll rally for the state.
Varun’s victory margin might be small, but the grand-old party’s legislator registered his win even in the Naraingarh assembly segment, the home town of chief minister Nayab Saini. Here, the margin with the runner-up and BJP candidate Banto Kataria was 20,906 votes.
Not only this, the BJP also lost in Saini’s ancestral village – Mirzapur Majra—in the same segment, where Varun, who is the son of former Congress’ state president and four-time MLA Phool Chand Mullana, gained 86 votes over Banto. Congress’ working president Ramkishan Gujjar’s wife Shalley Chaudhary is the Naraingarh MLA.
In Ambala City, represented by minister of state Aseem Goel, Varun won with a margin of 5,699 votes. In contrast, in the Mullana segment that he represents in Vidhan Sabha, there was a difference of 28,118 votes.
In neighbouring Sadhaura segment, the margin was highest on the seat with 40,055 votes, where Congress’ Renu Bala is the MLA and is dominated by voters from the Muslim and Scheduled Caste communities.
On the home turf of agriculture minister and senior BJP leader Kanwar Pal in Jagadhari, the Congress’ margin remained at 15,446 votes, while Banto gained 24,675 votes in Yamunanagar, also represented by BJP MLA Ghanshyam Das.
Banto also registered victory in Panchkula and Kalka seats, as well as in Ambala Cantonment, where six-time MLA Anil Vij led the campaign. The BJP leader was riding high on the sympathy vote for her late husband and aimed for a party hat-trick.
Varun has enjoyed good relations with both factions of the party—former CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda and former MP from Ambala Kumari Selja—despite his father’s proximity with the former and Ambala being the stronghold of the latter.
The victory for faction-ridden Congress here is significant as it witnessed a united front for Varun that was rarely seen on any other seat and his relations with both the camps helped, a party insider said. This can be quenched by the fact that Hooda held a poll rally in Varun’s favour in Ambala Cantonment, while Selja addressed a public meeting in Raipur Rani during her busy election schedule in Sirsa.
Not only this, the leaders close to both camps held successful events in their areas for Varun and were seen together at several of them.
Dr Kushal Pal, a political analyst, and principal of Indira Gandhi National College in Kurukshetra’s Ladwa, said farmers’ agitation, consolidation of Jat votes, and gain of SC voters played in Varun’s favour.
“Ambala has been the epicentre of both the farmers’ agitation in 2020 and now in 2024. There was a heavy backlash against the BJP due to this and we’ve seen how the farmers cornered their leaders during the campaigning,” he said.
