Gurgaon Lok Sabha election: A royal scion is challenged by an ‘outsider’ film star, and also a singer
Gurgaon Lok Sabha election: A royal scion is challenged by an ‘outsider’ film star, and also a singer
Gurgaon Lok Sabha constituency is in certain ways a mix of different people and places. The constituency includes the high-tech parts of Gurugram with its high-rise residential and corporate buildings. Then there are also the rural regions of Rewari and backward areas of Nuh.
The constituency is among Haryana’s 10 Parliamentary seats that will go to polls in Phase 6 of Lok Sabha election 2024 on May 25 to witness a face-off among contestants who are different personalities themselves.
BJP has renominated Union Minister of State Rao Inderjit Singh (74), scion of the Royal Ahir family of the erstwhile state of Rewari. His father, Rao Birendra Singh was a Chief Minister of Haryana. In 2019, he defeated Capt. Ajay Singh of the Congress by more than 3.8 lakh votes. He has been in touch with the people in this area and is hailed as a “nice person” who is expected to get Ahir support.
The Congress has fielded film star Raj Babbar (73), who is a Punjabi, with his political arena largely being in Uttar Pradesh. It was a surprise decision by the party which ignored the 2019 runner-up. Babbar is being dubbed “outsider” in certain quarters. But his nomination is also perceived as an attempt at targeting urban voters, along with Punjabis, and also minorities. The Punjabi community is in majority in Gurgaon and Rewari assembly segments, while Nuh has a huge population of Meo Muslims.
Meanwhile, the Jannayak Janta Party (JJP) – which has recently withdrawn support to the state’s BJP government – has named singer-rapper Rahul Yadav, popularly known by his village name, Fazilpuria. And to add colour to the contest, there is a pav-bhaji seller Kusheshwar Bhagat who some refer as “dhartipakad”, because he has been contesting for more than half-a-dozen times.
Interestingly, Bhagat’s election symbol in 2019 was a ‘plate containing food’. Despite the support of his clientele at the food stall he otherwise runs, the MP-wannabe could get only 434 votes.
However, the main battle for supremacy in Gurgaon will again be between the two national parties. Incidentally, the constituency ceased to exist after 1977. It was after the delimitation exercise that Lok Sabha polls were held in 2009. The mandate went in favour of Rao Inderjit Singh, then a Congress candidate. He went on to retain this seat in the next two elections on a BJP ticket.
When with the Congress, Rao also was an MLA in the Haryana assembly for four terms, starting 1977. From 1982 to 1987 he was a provincial Minister of State for Food and Civil Supplies. He was elected to the Lok Sabha as a Member of Parliament from the erstwhile constituency of Mahendragarh twice, in 1998 and 2004, on a Congress ticket.
The current Congress candidate is a celebrated actor with more than 150 films and 30 plays to his credit who entered politics with the Janata Dal in 1989. He later joined the Samajwadi Party (SP) under Mulayam Singh Yadav, and then the Congress. Babbar has been Rajya Sabha member twice – representing Uttar Pradesh for SP between 1994-2000, and for the Congress 2015-2020 from Uttarakhand.
Raj Babbar has also been Lok Sabha member for three terms, the last being from Firozabad, where as a Congress candidate, he defeated SP’s Dimple Yadav in a bye-election in 2009. In subsequent elections, he lost to BJP’s General V. K. Singh in 2014 from Ghaziabad by a mandate of over 5.6 lakh and to Rajkumar Chahar, again of the BJP, in 2019 from Fatehpur Sikri by more than 4.9 lakh votes.
Elections are being held this time in Gurgaon Lok Sabha seat in the aftermath of the communal clashes which broke out in Nuh last year during the Brajmandal Yatra by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. The incident has since changed the atmosphere of the usually peaceful region.
Among the nine assembly segments that constitute Gurgaon Lok Sabha constituency, the BJP won four (mainly in Gurugram and one in Rewari district), and the Congress four (one Rewari, rest in Nuh), and one Vidhan Sabha seat in Gurugram went to an independent candidate in the 2019 Haryana Legislative Assembly election.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, Gurgaon Lok Sabha constituency witnessed a voter turnout of 14,46,509 or 67.26% of its total of 21,50,728 electors.