Rohtak/Hisar: When RSS ideologue Manohar Lal Khattar, 70, became the chief minister of Haryana for the first time in 2014, Divyanshu Budhiraja was a young fellow going to college. But make no mistake. Pitted against heavyweight Khattar from the Karnal constituency, Divyanshu, 30, is making his seasoned rival sweat like never before.
Some 200-odd km away from Karnal, a battle of prestige is being played out between the Chautala bahus (daughters-in-law) in the Jat-dominated Hisar constituency.
Interestingly, this constituency has never witnessed a woman candidate in decades.
Not far away in Rohtak, a lot is at stake for Congress strongman and former CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda. Hooda's son Deepender is in a direct fight with BJP’s Arvind Sharma. As candidates across parties sweat it out with mercury skyrocketing beyond 47 degrees Celsius in some places, the BJP is facing an uphill task to retain its 10/10 tally. The Congress, which drew a blank in 2019, hopes only to gain a number of seats in the Haryana battleground.
In the non-Jat Punjabi-dominated Karnal belt, Khattar’s cavalcade stops after every short interval prompting a dialogue with the electorate. Khattar says he will return after winning the seat and fulfil all promises. "It’s a double-engine sarkaar that will help you," he calls out.
But there’s palpable anti-incumbency against him, which his nearest rival, Divyanshu of the Congress, does not fail to cash in on. He says Khattar was "removed" as CM just ahead of the elections and links it to his poor performance and failures. Interestingly, Khattar was named BJP nominee early enough by denying the Karnal seat to incumbent BJP MP Sanjay Bhatia who won the seat by a massive margin of over 6 lakh votes last time.
By fielding a first-timer Divyanshu, who is the president of the Haryana Youth Congress, the party is trying to split the non-Jat and Punjabi votes that Khattar is eying. Both Divyanshu and Khattar are outsiders and belong to the Punjabi clan. The votes of the Ror community in the constituency, too, are headed for a split. With Hooda having hegemony over the dominant Jat votes, the Congress may also benefit from the Jat voters in the area. The BJP in 2019 won 70 per cent of the votes in Karnal with Congress a distant second with just about 20 per cent. Despite odds stacked against the BJP, including the unrest of the farmers against the saffron party, Khattar for now has a clear advantage in Karnal.
The contest in the Rohtak Lok Sabha seat will determine the popularity of Bhupinder Singh Hooda whose son Deepinder is pitted against BJP’s sitting MP Arvind Sharma. Rohtak has 6.6 lakh Jat voters. The Congress has won this seat 11 out of 18 times.
However, in 2019, Deepinder lost to Arvind Sharma. For Hooda, the challenge in Rohtak this time too is to take the lead in areas like Kosli which is dominated by the Ahirs community who voted against him last time.
Agniveer is an election issue in Haryana and Deepinder says the BJP candidates continue to maintain a stoic silence on this issue, on the humiliation of Olympic wrestlers, the unrest of the peasantry and other public issues.
In Hisar, another Jat-dominated constituency, the Chautala bahus are facing each other in the poll battleground. While Naina Chautala of the JJP is the daughter-in-law of former CM Om Prakash Chautala, Sunaina Chautala of the INLD is the daughter-in-law of his elder brother late Pratap Chautala.
It’s a battle of prestige for the two women in the fray — the first time ever in many decades in Hisar — yet the contest is only a direct fight between BJP’s Ranjit Chautala and Congress candidate Jai Prakash, who has won this seat three times since 1989.