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Congress fails to improve vote share in Gurugram
Barring the victory of Chiranjeev Rao in Rewari, Congress could improve its vote share only by a few percentage points in south Haryana.
After a much-delayed reshuffle in the state party leadership, the Congress managed to take the fight to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) across the state, but there was little improvement in the party’s performance in Gurugram. In the results declared on Thursday, none of the candidates managed even the second spot in Gurgaon, Badhshapur, Sohna or Pataudi constituencies, which are part of Gurugram district.
Barring the victory of Chiranjeev Rao in Rewari, Congress could improve its vote share by only a few percentage points in south Haryana.
In Gurgaon, Congress candidate Sukhbir Kataria managed to get only the third spot, after BJP’s Sudhir Singla and independent candidate Mohit Grover. At 23,126 votes, his share was 12.22% of the total votes polled — an improvement of almost 4%, from 8.35% in 2014 polls.
In Badshahpur constituency, party candidate Rao Kamalbir Singh came fourth, securing 10,735 votes, which accounted for 6.5% of the total votes polled. In 2019, the Congress candidate from Badshahpur, Virender Yadav, had managed to get 5.07% of the votes, also coming fourth.
In the Pataudi assembly constituency, Sudhir Choudhary of the Congress managed to secure 13.85% of the votes, securing the fourth spot. In the last assembly elections, he had secured 11.86% of the vote share and had managed to secure the third position.
Congress candidate for Sohna, Dr Shamsudin, managed to come fourth, with a 6.5% vote share. In the previous assembly elections, Congress candidate Rohtash Bedi had secured fewer than 4,000 votes of the 148,319 votes polled in the constituency. Shamsudin, however, had managed to get 10,735 votes in the constituency.
Congress insiders said that ticket distribution could have been better, by taking into account the local caste equations. A number of party leaders also joined the BJP after the distribution of tickets was announced, they added.
“Congress could not distribute the party tickets as per the right social engineering and this ensured that we could neither improve the rank nor percentage significantly. The local factors should have been taken into account,” said Ved Prakash Vidrohi, Congress state spokesperson.
The Congress, however, managed to take Rewari from the BJP as Chiranjeev Rao, son of Captain (retd) Ajay Singh Yadav, won the seat, albeit by a slender margin. Yadav has won this seat six times earlier and it was considered his pocket borough until Randhir Kapriwas won in 2014.
In the Lok Sabha polls, Yadav, who was the party candidate, had managed to get 34% of the votes, an improvement of almost 24%.
In neighbouring Mewat, the Congress, however, managed to win all three seats in Nuh, Ferozepur Jhirka and Punhana.
