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BJP’s Arti Rao wins nail-biting contest in Ateli
The contest between Arti Rao and Attar Lal of the BSP remained a humdinger throughout the day with the latter leading the vote count by 3,000 to 4,000 votes till the last three rounds of counting. In Rewari assembly constituency in south Haryana, Chiranjeev Rao, Congress candidate and son of six time Rewari MLA however lost the election to Laxman Singh Yadav of BJP
Gurugram:
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) nominee Arti Rao, who is the daughter of sitting BJP MP and veteran party leader Rao Inderjit Singh, managed to win the Ateli seat in a nail-biting contest defeating Attar Lal of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) on Tuesday. Rao, who was expected to sail through the election due to the immense clout enjoyed by her father in south Haryana, won the election with a narrow margin after trailing behind the BSP candidate throughout the day.
According to local residents, differences among the local BJP leadership and lack of support for the party candidate were responsible for the difficulties Rao faced in Ateli.
Addressing her supporters and BJP workers at Rampura House in Rewari on Tuesday evening, after her victory, Rao thanked the people of Ateli, and the large number of people, who supported her through the month-long election campaign. “I am thankful to you for supporting me and it is because of your hard work and dedication that this victory was possible. It was a nail-biting finish and finally we made it,” she said amid loud applause of supporters.
The contest between Arti Rao and Attar Lal of the BSP remained a humdinger throughout the day with the latter leading the vote count by 3,000 to 4,000 votes till the last three rounds of counting. The Ateli assembly constituency is considered to be a safe seat and it was due to this reason that Rao was fielded by Rao Inderjit Singh to contest her debut election from this seat, said a senior BJP leader, on condition of anonymity.
“The reason for this difficult win is that a lot of people had conspired to ensure Arti Rao gets defeated in this election as this could be a major dent to Rao Inderjit Singh, the sitting BJP MP who managed to get the party ticket for his daughter after a lot of effort. Despite internal differences, it was due to the hard work of the BJP candidate and her supporters that she managed to win,” he said.
According to Election Commission of India data, after 18 rounds of counting, Arti Rao, managed to get 57,737 votes while Attar Lal of BSP got 54,652 votes and Anita Yadav of the Congress, came in third with 30,037 votes.
During the day, Rao trailed for 15 rounds in the closely contested election and it was in the 16th round only that she managed to make up the deficit, while winning the last two rounds, which ensured that she won by 3085 votes, as per the latest ECI data.
Ateli constituency in south Haryana has 52 villages and it comprises of 2 lakh voters, of which 1.06 lakh are men and 96,417 are women.
In Rewari assembly constituency in south Haryana, Chiranjeev Rao, Congress candidate and son of six time Rewari MLA however lost the election to Laxman Singh Yadav of BJP. Chiranjeev Rao was the sitting Rewari MLA and he was expected to win the seat as the BJP candidate was facing a lot of opposition being an outsider.
As per the election commission data, Laxman Singh Yadav defeated Congress’s Chiranjiv Rao by 28769 votes. Laxman Singh got 83747 votes while Chiranjiv Rao got 54978 votes and came second. AAP’s Satish Yadav got 18427 votes and he came third while the fourth position was secured by Prashant Sunny Yadav got 7787 votes. On the fifth position, BSP’s Vijay Somani got 757 votes. On the sixth position, Shishupal got 354 votes.
