Veteran Rao Inderjit Singh stamps his authority on Gurgaon seat

BJP's Rao Inderjit Singh wins Gurgaon Lok Sabha seat for fourth term, beating Congress's Raj Babbar by 75,079 votes. Singh secured 50.44% vote share.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate for the Gurgaon Lok Sabha seat Rao Inderjit Singh won the constituency for a fourth consecutive term, comfortably defeating his Congress opponent Raj Babbar by a margin of 75,079 votes.

Rao Inderjit Singh address the supporters after his win on Tuesday. (Parveen Kumar/HT Photo)

Singh secured 808,336 votes — translating to a vote share of 50.44% — against 733,257 votes (45.84%) secured by Babbar. With the win, Singh has become the first politician to have won six Lok Sabha seats in Haryana — he had earlier represented the Mahendragarh seat on two separate occasions.

As the counting of the votes began, Singh and Babbar were initially neck-to-neck, but the BJP pick started pulling away into a clear lead by 2pm.

A perusal of the voting patterns from the nine assembly constituencies that make up the Gurgaon seat revealed that Singh received strong support from the two urban areas of Gurugram and Badshahpur, along with the traditional party bastion of Rewari.

Though the Congress performed well in the minority-dominated assembly seats of Nuh, Punhana and Firozpur Jhirka, the BJP candidate pulled more votes in the remaining areas of Pataudi, Bawal, and Sohna.

After he was declared the winner, Singh thanked the people for ensuring a “historic victory”.

“I am thankful to the people who voted in large numbers despite the heat. We fought the elections on the plank of development which was carried out in Gurugram and Haryana over the last 10 years. The voters have reiterated their faith in the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. My win will ensure that development continues in Gurugram and Haryana,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Congress said it gave a tough fight to the BJP. Party leader Sukhbir Kataria said the Congress worked hard during the elections.

“We ensured that the margin was less as BJP has expected to win by 800,000 votes. We got less time to mobilise voters as the candidature of Raj Babbar got delayed. We were also unable to convince the urban voters in the city, who voted for the BJP. We will make amends in the coming Vidhan Sabha polls,” said Kataria.

Congress workers and leaders also said they got votes in all the nine assembly constituencies in the Gurgaon constituency, which was a boost for the party.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Singh won the seat with 8,81,546 votes and managed a vote share of 61%. Leading by a margin of 3,86,256 votes, Singh defeated his nearest rival and Congress candidate Captain Ajay Yadav, who secured 4,95,290 votes.

Meanwhile, the BJP also won the Faridabad seat, which also went to polls during the sixth phase. BJP’s Krishan Pal defeated the Congress’s Mahendra Pratap Singh, who was trailing by a margin of 172,914 votes.