A tense contest awaits the constituency of Karnal Sabha between an experienced political-strategist and a young prospective leader.
As things unfold, it is possible that ex-lovers may confront each other face to face. Haryana Chief Minister and Bhartiya Janta Party (bjp) Candidate Manohar Lal Khattar Haryana Youth Congress President Divyanshu BudilajaNotably, this is no ordinary election for Khatar.
Khattar, 70, represented Karnal in the Lok Sabha during the parliamentary elections of 2014 and 2019 elections before quitting in March this year.
The BJP’s strategist and two-time chief minister Khattar is his party’s face for Haryana’s Lok Sabha and forthcoming assembly polls. Since 2014, all new developments as well as other projects have been driven by Khattar making him to encounter various hurdles during this Assembly election period.
Besides having to sustain a win wave while dealing with a strong undercurrent of anti-incumbency, another challenge facing Khattar is to keep up with the winning margin set by Sanjay Bhatia in the previous poll of 2019.
In 2019 , Ashwani Chopra polled 49.96% votes; Sanjay Bhatia won with a margin of 6,56,142 votes defeating Kuldeep Sharma from JP who scored ‘70.08.’ BJP has been winning this seat since ’14 when Sanjay Bhatia emerged victorious with Kuldeep Sharma as his nearest rival securing over six lakh votes more than him.
Another challenge remains that Khattar has to campaign throughout the state sometimes even beyond state partisanship even though he has not campaigned against congress in any general election before.Several problems including start-ups’ projects, smart cities and entrepreneurs at Karnal and Panipat are demanding these two districts out of National Capital Territory through Council of Air Quality Management (CAQM), hence, Khattar’s eyes keep wandering toward Qatar among mixed urban-rural constituency candidates for both the regions.
There are nine assembly wards in this assembly constituency spread over Karnal and Panipat districts. In addition to the urban pockets of these two districts, saffron party will also have to deal with challenge of making a dent in the rural areas especially after what happened on Tuesday when independent MLAs from Ponderi and Nilokhri pledged their support for Congress party.
In addition to having the support of two Independent MLAs, Budhiraja is in a stronger position due to relief from Punjab and Harayana High Court.
A 30-year-old young Turk has blessings of Hooda family –former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and federal parliament member Deepender Hooda- Relying on cadre votes, influence of Hooda family members , anti-incumbency votes and vote shifts because of rural grievances.
Budhiraja was apparently the only politician who dared to confront Khattar on his show.
The only thing common between them is that they both are not married.
Khada remains single while Budhiraja may marry some day in future.
Other than him, there are two more candidates running for election in Karnal: Devender Kadian from JJP and Virender Maratha from NCP, who enjoy INLD’s backing as well.
