Adampur: A seat that Bhajan Lal’s family didn’t lose since 1968; can party-hoppers break winning streak?

AAP, however, is all set to test waters this time by fielding a former Congress and a BJP turncoat Satender Singh. BJP has fielded Bhajan Lal’s grandson and Kuldeep Bishnoi’s son Bhavya Bishnoi, a 29-year-old who is going to contest his second election. Bhavya lost 2019 Lok Sabha polls from Hisar to BJP’s bureaucrat-turned-politician Brijendra Singh and could not even save his security deposit. INLD, which has a lone MLA in the 90-member Haryana Vidhan Sabha is yet to announce its candidate.

The Arvind Kejriwal led AAP is also having high hopes from the upcoming Adampur bypoll citing Kejriwal’s Haryana connection. Kejriwal also held a massive road show in Adampur on September 7 and launched his “Make India No.1” campaign from here. Kejriwal accompanied by Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Mann toured Hisar for two days and held several public meetings.

Party affairs incharge of Haryana for AAP, Sushil Gupta lashed out at Kuldeep Bishnoi calling him a “completely inaccessible leader” who only “comes to Adampur for a picnic, especially at the time of elections”. Congress is playing its bet on a veteran politician Jai Prakash, who also has a distinction of making it to Lok Sabha from Hisar but each time on a different party’s ticket. He began his political career with Indian National Lok Dal’s founder Devi Lal in 1980s. He first won Hisar Lok Sabha polls in 1989 on a Janata Dal ticket, subsequently in 1996 on Haryana Vikas Party’s ticket and then last in 2004 on Indian National Congress’ ticket. In 1990, Jai Prakash also remained a deputy union minister in the then prime minister Chandra Shekhar’s government.

Adampur, popularly known as Mandi Adampur is a town, municipality, revenue tehsil, rural development block and one of the 90 Vidhan Sabha constituencies of Haryana. About 38 km northwest of Hisar city, Adampur is located along the Hisar-Rewari railway line and is well connected by road with other towns of Haryana. In terms of infrastructure, Adampur has numerous government offices including Block-Development-Officer, Municipality office, police stations, 132 KV electricity substation, agriculture marketing committee, farmers rest house, women and child welfare office, block-agriculture office, PWD office, water purification plants, a railway station, bus stand, civil hospital, telephone exchange, post office, multiple gas agencies and fuel stations, offices of private and nationalised banks, oil and cotton factories etc.

As a Vidhan Sabha constituency, it falls under Hisar Lok Sabha constituency. In terms of education, besides over a dozen schools, Adampur has at least three colleges including Feroze Gandhi Memorial Post-graduate college, Adampur-Bhadra road; Government Polytechnic College and Maharaja Agrasain College, Daroli. Spread in an area of around 460 square kilometers, Adampur is one of the four tehsils in Hisar district. The other three include Hansi, Hisar and Narnaund. Over 90 per cent population of the constituency is Hindu religion and around 60 per cent population of the constituency lives in rural area. There are 28 villages and one town in Adampur constituency.

Since 1967, Congress had won 10 times in Adampur in which at least six times Bhajan Lal was party’s candidate and once his wife Jasma Devi won on the Congress ticket from here. Since 1968, Bhajan Lal’s family including himself, his wife Jasma Devi, son Kuldeep Bishnoi and Kuldeep’s wife Renuka Bishnoi had been consecutively winning from Adampur. Bhajan Lal’s family members had been winning Adampur irrespective of the party they were in. After quitting Congress, Bhajan Lal and Kuldeep Bishnoi floated their own party Haryana Janhit Congress (BL). As HJC candidates, Kuldeep contested 2009 assembly polls, his wife Renuka Bishnoi contested in 2011 bypoll, Kuldeep again contested in 2014 and all three times, they won. In 2016, Kuldeep merged his HJC (BL) into Congress and again won Adampur in 2019 assembly polls as a Congress candidate. After he was not appointed as Haryana Congress president, Kuldeep quit Congress in August and joined BJP. For that he had to resign from the Vidhan Sabha’s membership that necessitated the bypoll. “Adampur had been winning, Adampur will win again. When I accompanied Bhavya to file his nomination papers, today, history repeated itself,” Kuldeep Bishnoi said.