Lok Sabha 2019 constituency: BJP, Congress have Haryana’s Ambala seat on mind
Ambala has traditionally witnessed a direct contest between the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or Jana Sangh since 1967.
The Ambala parliamentary constituency is one of the ten Lok Sabha seats in Haryana and is reserved for members of Scheduled Castes.
There are nine assembly segments — Kalka, Panchkula, Naraingarh, Ambala Cantt, Ambala City, Mulana (SC), Sadhaura (SC), Jagadhri and Yamunanagar — under the Ambala Lok Sabha seat. Like all other constituencies in the northern state, the land-owning community of Jats dominate the political narrative in Ambala.
Ambala has traditionally witnessed a direct contest between the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or Jana Sangh since 1967. The Congress has dominated the seat and has won ten times since elections were first held in 1952 in Ambala. The BJP has been successful four times and Aman Kumar Nagra of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) was the only non-Congress, non-BJP candidate to have won the seat in 1998.
The BJP’s Rattan Lal Kataria won a majority in the Lok Sabha election in 1999. Four-time former Lok Sabha member Kumari Selja has defeated Rattan Lal Kataria twice in 2004 and 2009. Kumari Selja had successfully made her electoral debut in 1991 from Sirsa. In 2014, the BJP won the seat when Kataria got a majority. Kataria will be fighting his fourth election from the seat and won for the first time in 1999 against Phool Chand Mullana of the Congress.
All the parliamentary constituencies in Haryana will vote in the sixth round of the seven-phased Lok Sabha election on May 12. The votes will be counted on May 23.
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Here are a few details about the Ambala Lok Sabha seat:
State: Haryana
Name of the Lok Sabha constituency: Ambala
Polling date: May 12
2019 candidates: Prithvi Raj (AAP), Kumari Selja (Congress), Prithvi Raj Singh (AAP), Rampal Balmiki (Indian National Lok Dal), Naresh Saran (BSP)
Sitting MP, party: Rattan Lal Kataria, BJP
Winning margin in 2014: 340,074
Runner up name, party: Raj Kumar Balmiki, Congress
Number of voters in 2014: 1,218,995
Percentage of votes polled in 2014: 72.03%
Number of women voters in 2014: 782,519
Number of polling booths in 2014: 1,762