BJP manages to win 3 out of 4 seats in Ggm
GURUGRAM: The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) managed to win three out of the four assembly constituencies in the district on Thursday, but with a much lesser margin as compared to its performance in the 2014 assembly polls.
The party won Gurgaon, Sohna and Pataudi seats, with independent candidates giving it a tough fight in two seats. In Badshahpur, BJP’s Manish Yadav suffered a defeat at the hands of independent candidate Rakesh Daultabad by a margin of 10,186 votes.
In 2014, the BJP, which had won the Gurgaon seat by a record margin, had made a clean sweep in the district.
Badshahpur constituency is a mix of rural and urban areas. Political watchers said that BJP’s move of fielding a rookie on the seat backfired with residents of new sectors opting for Daultabad, who has previously contested as an independent candidate in 2009 and later on an Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) ticket in 2014 assembly polls. On both occasions, he was the runner up and managed to get considerable votes.
Another reason being given for Daultabad’s victory is that a large section of Ahir (Yadav) voters, who were unhappy over the decision of BJP to axe sitting MLA Rao Narbir Singh’s ticket, decided to either vote for the independent candidate or stay away from the polling. This was also one of the reasons that voting percentage remained the lowest in Badshahpur across all constituencies in Gurugram district.
“I promise to work for the people of Badshahpur and thank them for this victory,” Daultabad said in a statement.
The BJP, however, managed to stave off the threat in Gurgaon by heavily mobilizing the rank and file of the party cadre, which also helped overcome the disquiet over ticket distribution. Its candidate, Sudhir Singla, won the Gurgaon seat with a margin of 33,315 votes over independent candidate Mohit Grover, who contested the election for the first time but managed to race ahead of the Congress.
Grover, a 26-year-old Punjabi, seems to have gained votes from his community that has a considerable presence in the constituency. His father Madan Lal Grover has been a long-time Congress leader and also served as district president of the party.
Congress candidate Sukhbir Kataria came third with 23,119 votes in the Gurgaon constituency.
The contest in Sohna remained neck and neck for the first 10 rounds, but finally BJP’s Sanjay Singh defeated his nearest rival Rohtash Khatana of Jannayak Janata Party (JJP) with a margin of 12,453 votes. Khatana, the richest candidate in Haryana polls, fared better in villages powered by Gujjar votes, who seem to have largely supported him. Singh managed to get 59,117 votes while Khatana got 46,664 votes. Javed Ahmed of Bahujan Samaj took the third spot while the Congress stood fourth. “I have fought election as an ordinary political worker and people from all sections in Sohna have voted for me. I assure them of all-round development,” said BJP’s Singh.
Pataudi, which is the only reserved seat in Gurugram, did not witness much drama as BJP candidate Satya Prakash Jrawta won with a comfortable margin of 36,579 votes against his nearest rival Narender Singh Pahari, an RSS pracharak. Pahari chose to fight as an independent candidate and was expected to get support from the sizeable Yadav community in the constituency, which, however, preferred to stick with the BJP.
“This is a victory of BJP and people of Pataudi, who have voted for me cutting across caste and community lines. We are confident of forming the government in Haryana as we have required numbers,” said Jrawta.