Chandigarh: With his victory as the ruling BJP candidate in the Adampur bypoll on Sunday, Bhavya Bishnoi, the grandson of former chief minister Bhajan Lal, has not only retained the family stronghold but also registered the maiden win of his political career.
Bhavya, 29, defeated Congress’ Jai Prakash, aka JP, 67, the choice of the former two-time chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, with a margin of 15,714 votes.
Bhavya is the son of Kuldeep Bishnoi, also a former Congress leader who quit the grand old party in August this year and joined BJP reportedly for not making him the state party chief. This necessitated this bye-election.
Adampur seat has always been won by Congress veteran late Bhajan Lal or his family members since 1968. He is the fifth member of Bhajan Lal family to have won the seat as earlier, besides his grandfather, his grandmother Jasma Devi, father Kuldeep Bishnoi and mother Renuka Bishnoi have represented the seat.
This bypoll, nonetheless, was not an easy fight for Bhavya as he had faced a brutal drubbing as a Congress candidate in his maiden electoral test in 2019 for Hisar parliamentary poll when he even lost his deposit against BJP’s Brijendra Singh.
Jai Prakash, 67, a former three-time MP from Hisar and an MLA from Kalayat that falls in district Kaithal, is a loyalist of Hooda, who is currently leader of Opposition in state assembly. However, some of the senior party leaders including former party president Kumari Selja, Randeep Surjewala, Kiran Chaudhry and Capt Ajay Yadav were conspicuous for their absence during campaigning.
Sources in the Congress said, their absence was in the wake of remarks of some party leaders - who foreseeing good chances of JP’s win -, tried to give credit only to Hooda and his MP (Rajya Sabha) son Deepender Hooda, in case the party won.
This bypoll was also crucial for the BJP as it had lost two bypolls since it came to power in 2014 – Baroda seat to Congress in 2020 and Ellenabad seat to INLD in 2021.
Moreover, the election was being seen as a battle of prestige for all the political majors – BJP (with its coalition partner Jannayak Janta Party), Congress, INLD and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). Hence not an easy fight for Bhavya.
Bhavya belongs to the Bishnoi community while his trio rivals came from the Jat community which comprises over 45% of votes in this constituency having over 1.7 lakh votes followed by Bishnoi votes – with over 25%. The seat also has over 25% SC votes and about 10% each of OBC, Brahmin, Baniya and Punjabi votes. This means, Congress failed to garner its traditional vote share in Adampur which had also backed Bishnoi family members as Congress candidates.
The contest saw state CM Manohar Lal Khattar and its ally JJP leader and deputy chief minister Dushyant Chautala, besides a battery of senior BJP and JJP leaders, frequenting Adampur till the end.
Hooda and his son also repeatedly visited Adampur, while Arvind Kejriwal, CM of Delhi and his Punjab counterpart, Bhagwant Mann campaigned for AAP nominee Satinder Singh and the INLD supremo O P Chautala led the campaigns for party’s candidate Kurda Ram Nambardar.
The last two named nominees, however, lost their deposits, like all the remaining 18 candidates.
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