Bishnoi bags Hisar LS seat, Congress crushed

Causing a major humiliation to the ruling Congress leadership, the Haryana Janhit Congress (BL) candidate Kuldeep Bishnoi with the backing of Bharatiya Janata Party bagged the Hisar Parliamentary constituency byelection today. Rajesh Moudgil reports.

Causing a major humiliation to the ruling Congress leadership, the Haryana Janhit Congress (BL) candidate Kuldeep Bishnoi with the backing of Bharatiya Janata Party bagged the Hisar Parliamentary constituency byelection on Monday.

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It is the first time that Congress’ candidate had lost his deposit not only in Hisar Parliamentary constituency but also in any of the election in the history of the state elections, thus causing a major setback to ruling Congress leadership especially the chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda who himself had led party candidate Jai Parkash’s campaign.

Albeit, Bishnoi who won with a margin of just 6,323 votes, polled 3,55,941 votes, while his nearest rival INLD’s Ajay Chautala got 3,49,618 votes and the Congress’ Jai Parkash finished poor third with 1,49,784 votes, votes, a little short of getting his deposit forfeited. Of the total 13.32 lakh votes in Hisar Lok Sabha constituency, 9, 16,472 (about 70 %) votes were cast. While Bishnoi bagged 38.84 %, Chautala, 38.15 %, Jai Parkash had got just about 16.34 % of the total votes cast.

Conspicuously enough, while Bishnoi and Chautala seemed to have their respective citadel and be neck-and-neck in some of the total nine assembly segments of this Parliamentary constituency, the Congress trailed for behind in all these despite the fact it had six sitting MLAs there.

In Uchana Kalan assembly segment which has INLD supremo Om Parkash Chautala as sitting MLA who had defeated Congress heavyweight Birender Singh in last general election in 2009, Chautala junior garnered 68,157 votes while Bishnoi got 33,678 and Jai Parkash, just 12,869 votes.

In Adampur segment, where Bishnoi himself is sitting MLA, he got 51,640 votes pushing Chautala back with only 28,033 votes while Jai Parkash got only 15,472.

In Uklana assembly segment, where Congress’ Naresh Selwal is the sitting MLA, the Chautala got 53,468, Bishnoi, 31,173 and the Congress’ candidate got 20,541.

In Narnaund, where INLD’s Saroj is the sitting MLA, Chautala bagged 52,256 votes, Bishnoi 29,070, while Congress got 23,697.

In Hansi assembly segment which has Vinod Bhayana, who was formerly HJC (BL) MLA, Bishnoi got 40,777, Chautala, 33,211, while the Jai Parkash had been left with 16,262 votes.

In Barwala segment, where Ram Niwas Ghorela of Congress is the MLA, Bishnoi got 42,647 votes, Chautala, 30,531 and the Congress less than even half of them – 14, 105.

In Hisar assembly segment which is represented by Congress’ MLA Savitri Jindal, Bishnoi got 50,947 votes and Chautala, 16,556 and Congress’ candidate, just 7,488.

In Nalwa segment too which has sitting Congress’ MLA Sampat Singh who was earlier associated with INLD, Bishnoi maintained his lead and got 41,206 votes while Chautala got 30,076 votes and Jai Parkash 14,375.

In Bawani Khera (SC) assembly segment which too has a sitting Congress’ MLA Ramkishan Fouji, the INLD’s Chautala got 37,330 and HJC-BJP candidate Bishnoi got 34,803 and Jai Parkash, 24,975 votes.

Bishnoi’s victory came as as a major setback to the ruling Congress which had fielded three-time MP Jai Prakash, who had backing of chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda himself as well as the six of the total nine MLAs in the constituency.

In 2009 Lok Sabha polls, Bhajan Lal of Haryana Janhit Congress got 2.48 lakh votes, Sampat Singh of INLD finished 2.41 lakh votes, Jai Prakash of the Congress finished third getting 2.04 lakh votes.

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