Over 75 pc voter turnout in Adampur bypoll

Chandigarh, November 3

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A turnout of over 75 per cent was recorded in Haryana’s Adampur Assembly segment in Hisar district where by-elections were held on Thursday.

The outcome of the bypoll will decide if the Bhajan Lal family retains the family bastion of five decades. Bhavya Bishnoi, grandson of former chief minister Bhajan Lal, entered the fray as a BJP candidate.

Polling began at 7 am and continued till 6 pm. Nearly 1.71 lakh voters were eligible to cast their votes. Counting of votes will be taken up on November 6.

At the end of polling, the poll percentage recorded was 75.25, but the final figure may slightly increase once the entire data is compiled, officials said.

During the day, long queues of voters, many among them women, were witnessed were witnessed at many polling booths.

The first-time voters were brimming with excitement as they flashed the indelible ink mark on their finger before photographers after casting their votes. Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar appealed to the Adampur electorate to vote in large numbers.

A poll percentage of 10.5 was recorded in the first two hours. The turnout hit 22.51 per cent at 11 am, 41.24 per cent at 1 pm, 55.12 per cent at 3 pm and just an hour before polling was to end the figure climbed to 69.21, according to the Election Commission of India data.

In the 2019 assembly polls, Adampur had recorded 75.72 poll percentage.

“Polling went off peacefully,” Haryana’s Chief Electoral Officer Anurag Agarwal told PTI.

Twenty-two candidates, all men, were in the fray. The main parties contesting the by-election are the BJP, Congress, Indian National Lok Dal, and Aam Aadmi Party.

The bypoll was necessitated after former Haryana chief minister Bhajan Lal’s younger son Kuldeep Bishnoi resigned as MLA and switched from the Congress to the BJP in August.

Bishnoi’s son Bhavya, who is contesting as the BJP candidate, had also quit the Congress and joined the BJP.

Bhavya, 29, had lost the 2019 Lok Sabha polls from Hisar to BJP’s bureaucrat-turned-politician Brijendra Singh.

A total of 180 polling booths have been set up, 36 of them have been termed “sensitive” and 39 “hypersensitive.”           Tight security arrangements had been made by the district administration to conduct the polling in a free, fair, and peaceful manner, the officials said.

The Congress has fielded former Union minister Jai Prakash, a three-time MP from Hisar and two-time MLA as well. The INLD has nominated Congress rebel Kurda Ram Nambardar while the AAP has fielded Satender Singh, who switched over from the BJP.

Kuldeep Bishnoi defeated the late Sonali Phogat, who had contested on a BJP ticket, in Adampur in the Assembly elections of 2019.

Adampur has been the Bhajan Lal family’s citadel since 1968 and at the end of the polls, Kuldeep Bishnoi exuded confidence that Bhavya will win with a heavy margin.

Kuldeep Bishnoi, his mother Jasma Devi, son Bhavya, and wife Renuka turned up early at the polling booth to cast their votes.

“Everyone should come and cast their vote,” Kuldeep Bishnoi told reporters after casting his vote.

On Congress candidate Jai Prakash, the senior Bishnoi said earlier in the day that he would make a record of losing to the third generation of Bhajan Lal’s family.

“He will make a record of losing to the third generation of the Bhajan Lal family. First he lost to Chaudhary Bhajan Lal, then he lost against me (Hisar Lok Sabha polls earlier) and now he will lose to Bhavya,” he claimed.

On the other hand, Jai Prakash told reporters that the Congress was strong and Adampur has been a party stronghold and the BJP cannot win from here.

On Kuldeep saying that the Bhajan Lal family was fighting this poll while being in government after a gap of 26 years, Jai Prakash said, “People will send them to permanent exile.” While the BJP had sought votes on the basis of equitable development it has carried out in the state and brought in transparency in various spheres of governance, the Congress had targeted the Khattar government for having “failed” on all fronts and claimed unemployment, crime, inflation were at their peak and no development was carried out by them during their eight years’ rule so far.  AAP leader Anurag Dhanda told reporters that there was great enthusiasm among voters and his party was getting good support from the public who want to “vote for change” and are voting on issues such as education, drinking water and healthcare.

Dhanda said the AAP would do “very well” in these bypolls and both the BJP and the Congress will get a “big surprise” when the results are declared.

The INLD candidate, meanwhile, said he got good support from a cross-section of society and exuded confidence about his victory. PTI