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Journalism of Courage
In the memorandum submitted to the Election Commission on Wednesday, the Congress said its candidates in Haryana and their polling agents had discovered “a glaring discrepancy” related to EVM machines in “a significant number of seats”, and that it had prepared a list of constituencies as an illustrative example.
The Congress then went on to name seven seats — Karnal, Rewari, Panipat city, Hodal, Kalka and Narnaul. The party lost these constituencies by margins ranging from 610 votes to 35,672 votes, all but one of them to the BJP.
Narnaul was the first seat named by the Congress as one where there could have been irregularities, with senior leaders mentioning the same on Tuesday, towards the end of counting.
Located in Mahendragarh, Narnaul was won by the BJP’s Om Prakash Yadav, who defeated the Congress’s Rao Narender Singh by 17,171 votes. Om Prakash, who also won from Narnaul in 2014 and 2019, increased his vote share from last time.
He is the Minister of State (Independent charge) for Social Justice and Empowerment, and for Saini & Ardh Sainik (paramilitary) Welfare in the outgoing BJP government.
The Congress last won from Narnaul in 1991. The Congress candidate this time, Narender Singh, also lost the last two times from Narnaul, finishing third. Both times, the candidate line-up was the same: Winner Om Prakash (BJP), followed by Kamlesh Saini (Jannayak Janata Party) and Narender Singh (Congress) in 2019; and winner Om Prakash (BJP) followed by Saini (INLD) and Narender Singh (Congress) in 2014.
Before that, in 2009, Narender Singh won from Narnaul, but he was then a candidate of the Kuldeep Bishnoi-led Haryana Janhit Congress (Bhajan Lal). Bishnoi has merged his party with the BJP now.
This Assembly constituency was represented by former BJP chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar from 2014 onwards, till he moved to the Centre in March this year. In the 2019 Assembly elections, Khattar won the seat by 45,188 votes. In the bypoll held for the seat in June, after Khattar moved to the Centre, the current incumbent CM Nayab Singh Saini won, defeating the Congress’s Tarlochan Singh by 41,540 votes.
In the Assembly polls that just ended, the BJP moved Saini to Ladwa and fielded Khattar’s close aide Jagmohan Anand from Karnal. Anand won, defeating the Congress’s Sumita Virk by 33,652 votes.
The Congress last won from Karnal in 2009, when its 2004 winner Sumita Singh retained the seat.
Dabwali saw a multi-corner contest, including two members of the extended Devi Lal family. Finally, Aditya Devilal, the grandson of Devi Lal, won on the INLD ticket, defeating sitting Congress MLA Amit Sihag by a narrow 610 votes.
Also in the race was the JJP’s Digvijay Chautala, the brother of former deputy CM Dushyant Chautala, who finished third but got 35,261 votes.
In 2019 too, Sihag and Aditya had faced off against each other. That time, Sihag won Dabwali by 17,645 votes against Aditya, who was then a BJP candidate.
Udai Bhan, the Haryana PCC chief and a close aide of Congress frontrunner CM face Bhupinder Singh Hooda, was the Congress candidate from here. In a result that was of particular embarrassment for Hooda, Bhan lost to the BJP’s Harinder Singh by 2,595 votes.
While Udai Bhan won from this seat in 2014 against the INLD’s Jagdish Nayar by 11,680 votes, he lost to Nayar in 2019 by 3,387 votes. In 2019, Nayar was a BJP candidate.
In Kalka, the BJP named former Union minister and ex-Congress leader Venod Sharma’s wife Shakti Rani Sharma as its candidate barely three days after she joined the party. While former BJP Kalka MLA Latika Sharma initially threatened to stay in the race and make Shakti Sharma’s task difficult, the party convinced her to drop out.
Shakti Sharma eventually defeated the Congress’s Pradeep Chaudhary by 10,883 votes. In 2019, Choudhary won the seat, defeating the BJP’s Latika Sharma by 5,931 votes.
The seat was retained by the BJP’s sitting MLA, Pramod Kumar Vij, by 35,672 votes, defeating the Congress’s Varinder Kumar Shah. Vij showed a small drop in his victory margin from 2019, when he defeated the Congress’s Sanjay Aggarwal by over 39,000 votes.
There was a BJP rebel in the contest, former MLA Rohita Rewari, who contested as an Independent and got 15,546 votes. But still the Congress’s Shah could not win.
The Congress last won this seat in 2009, when its candidate Balbir Pal Shah defeated the BJP’s Sanjay Bhatia by 12,159 votes.
The seat was seen as a stronghold of senior Congress leader and the chairman of its OBC Department, Capt Ajay Singh Yadav. But in 2019, his son Chiranjeev Rao, who is married to RJD chief Lalu Prasad’s daughter, scraped through from Rewari by just 1,317 votes, defeating the BJP’s then candidate Sunil Kumar.
This time, the BJP’s Laxman Singh Yadav defeated Chiranjeev by 28,769 votes.
However, in this seat, the Congress prospects may have been damaged by the Aam Aadmi Party, with its candidate Satish Yadav getting 18,427 votes.
Before the current Assembly elections, the BJP had won Rewari only once, in 2014, when Randhir Singh Kapriwas had defeated the INLD’s Satish Yadav by 45,466 votes.
