The Congress in Haryana touched nadir on Thursday with the result for 10 Lok Sabha seats bringing a complete rout for the grand old party. Barring three-time MP Deepender Hooda, who lost by a slender margin to BJP’s Arvind Sharma from his traditional Rohtak parliamentary constituency, the rest of the nine Congress candidates lost by huge margins in the range of 1.60-6.50 lakh.
The Congress party though can take solace in the fact that its vote share this time increased by about 5% — from 22.99 % in 2014 to about 28%. It’s still way below the 40% plus the party enjoyed when it won 9 seats in 2004 and 2009.
The biggest setback for the party was the loss of former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda who lost Sonepat by over 1.64 lakh votes to a relatively political lightweight, Ramesh Kaushik of the BJP.
Hooda, who was positioning himself for another innings as chief minister if the party was to get voted to power in the upcoming assembly polls, would find it hard to digest the defeat in a constituency which abuts his bastion Rohtak and is dominated by Jats. Hooda’s loss would also weaken his claim to the throne.
State party president, Ashok Tanwar, whom Hooda had found hard to dislodge from the top party post, badly lost Sirsa by over 3 lakh votes, a seat he had won in 2009 on his debut.
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Party big-wig, Kumari Selja also bit the dust from Ambala, losing to BJP’s RL Kataria by over 3.40 lakh votes. For Bhavya Bishnoi, the grandson of former chief minister, Bhajan Lal, his debut poll could not have been more embarrassing as he lost his deposit after finishing third from Hisar.
Congress candidates – Kuldeep Sharma in Karnal, Shruti Choudhry in Bhiwani-Mahendergarh, Krishan Pal Gurjar in Faridabad, Nirmal Singh in Kurukshetra and Capt Ajay Singh Yadav in Gurgaon – were whipped, suffering losses in the range of 3.80-6 lakh votes. In fact the kind of reverses the party suffered across the state made the defeats of two Hoodas — Deepender and his father Bhupinder Singh — look rather respectable. Deepender who had won Rohtak by 1.70 lakh votes in 2014 lost by 2,600 votes in a fiercely contested battle this time.
First Published:
May 24, 2019 14:03 IST
Source: HindustanTimes