Adampur constituency in Haryana’s Hisar district is all set to witness a high-stakes political battle on November 3. The constituency, considered to be a stronghold of Haryana’s three-time former chief minister Bhajan Lal’s family, is up for grabs again.
While the BJP, which has fielded Bhavya Bishnoi, the son of two-time MP and four-time MLA Kuldeep Bishnoi, appears to have an edge, considering the following the Bishnoi family has in the area, the Opposition is not ready to give up without a fight.
There are multiple reasons for the Congress, Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) to believe that they can break the Bishnoi family’s winning streak this time.
Congress is building its campaign to cash in on the anti-incumbency factor and farmers’ resentment against BJP with many leaders saying Kuldeep is a ‘traitor’ who deserted the constituency, quit the Congress and joined BJP to allegedly get his Enforcement Directorate and Income Tax cases settled.
The INLD, meanwhile, is attacking BJP for fielding 29-year-old Bhavya, who was educated abroad and spent most time of his youth there. AAP, on the other hand, has got nothing to lose as they are testing the waters in Adampur with an eye on the 2024 Assembly polls.
Bhavya, the grandson of Bhajan Lal, has nothing much to offer the electorate but is seeking votes on the achievements of his grandfather and parents Kuldeep and Renuka Bishnoi.
The constituency
Adampur, popularly known as Mandi Adampur, is one of the 90 Assembly 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. As a Vidhan Sabha constituency, it falls under Hisar Lok Sabha constituency.
In terms of infrastructure, Adampur has numerous government offices, oil and cotton factories, water purification plants, multiple gas agencies and fuel stations, offices of private and nationalised banks etc. Apart from over a dozen schools, Adampur has at least three colleges, including Feroze Gandhi Memorial Post-Graduate College, Government Polytechnic College and Maharaja Agrasain College.
Spread over an area of around 460 sq km, Adampur is one of four tehsils in Hisar district. The other three include Hansi, Hisar and Narnaund. Over 90 per cent population in the constituency is Hindu and around 60 per cent of the population lives in rural areas. There are 28 villages and one town in Adampur constituency.
The semi-urban (general) Adampur constituency has an estimated Scheduled Caste population of 19.88%. The estimated literacy rate of Hisar district, in which Adampur constituency falls, is 72.89%.
There are approximately a total of 1.7 lakh eligible electors in Adampur, of which 91,000 are men and 89,000 women. There are 180 polling booths, of which 36 were declared sensitive and 39 hyper-sensitive booths. At least 19 flying-squad teams have been constituted for fair polling.
In the 2019 Assembly polls, the voter turnout in Adampur was around 75.7%. In 2014, it was around 78.29%, and in 2009, the constituency witnessed approximately 81.22% polling.
Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) candidate Satinder Singh files his nomination for the upcoming by-election to the Adampur Assembly constituency, in Hisar, Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2022. (PTI Photo)
The Bhajan Lal connection
Bhajan Lal and his family members have been winning from Adampur, irrespective of the party they are in. Since 1967, the Congress has registered 10 wins in Adampur. While Bhajan Lal was the party’s candidate on six occasions, his wife Jasma Devi too won on a Congress ticket once. Apart from Bhajan Lal and his wife, his son Kuldeep and his wife Renuka too have won from Adampur.
After quitting Congress, Bhajan Lal and Kuldeep floated Haryana Janhit Congress (BL). As HJC candidates, Kuldeep contested the 2009 Assembly polls, his wife Renuka the 2011 bypolls and Kuldeep again in 2014 – on all three occasions, they won.
In 2016, Kuldeep merged his HJC (BL) into Congress and once again won Adampur in the 2019 Assembly polls as a Congress candidate.
After he was not appointed as Haryana Congress president, Kuldeep quit Congress in August this year and joined BJP. His resignation from the Vidhan Sabha necessitated the bypoll in Adampur.
Kuldeep’s vote share in Adampur had been increasing over the years. In 2009, he polled over 48,000 votes. This increased to over 56,000 votes in 2014 and to over 63,000 votes in the 2019 Assembly polls.
Congress candidate Jai Prakash during his campaign for upcoming Adampur constituency by-election, in Adampur. (PTI Photo)
If Bishnoi wins, BJP’s dependence on JJP reduces
If BJP nominee Bhavya Bishnoi wins the bypoll, it will put Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar and BJP in a more commanding position over its ally, Deputy Chief Minister Dushyant Chautala’s Jannayak Janata Party (JJP). There are already indications of fissures between the coalition even as the top leadership maintained that the alliance was running “smoothly” and “shall continue”.
Even as the BJP leaves no stone unturned to ensure it wins, the JJP has been sulking about being ‘sidelined’ from the campaign. However, Khattar tried to downplay the JJP’s heartburn saying that “the alliance was supporting Bishnoi and will ensure that he wins”.
Senior JJP leader and Dushyant’s younger brother Digvijay too expressed “surprise” after Dushyant did not figure anywhere in Bishnoi’s posters. “We are in alliance with BJP in Haryana and running a coalition government. BJP’s leadership always says that we are taking the alliance forward. In such a scenario, there is a bypoll and yet if there is no mention of any JJP leader on the posters, such behaviour is very surprising,” Digvijay said.
BJP’s list of star campaigners in Adampur has no mention of any JJP leader. The party’s social media teams have already started campaigning for the 2024 Assembly polls and Chief Minister Khattar continues to be the face of the party on the posters being circulated on social media. There too, there is no mention of an alliance or any JJP leader.
The number dynamics
In Haryana’s 90-member Vidhan Sabha, a party needs 46 MLAs to form the government with a simple majority. BJP, with 40 MLAs, fell short of the majority mark and entered into a post-poll alliance with the Dushyant-led JJP which has 10 MLAs. There are seven Independents out of whom Ranjit Chautala is currently the state’s power-cum-prisons minister. While Haryana Lokhit Party’s Gopal Kanda has already supported BJP, INLD has a lone MLA, Abhay Chautala.
BJP in-charge for Haryana and party MP Biplab Kumar Deb recently held a meeting with the six Independent MLAs at Haryana Vidhan Sabha Speaker Gian Chand Gupta’s residence. Sources said that all six MLAs, including Ranjit Chautala (Rania), Nayanpal Rawat (Prithla), Rakesh Daulatabad (Badshahpur), Randhir Golan (Pundri), Somvir Sangwan (Charkhi Dadri) and Dharampal Gondar (Nilokheri), assured Deb that they were with the BJP and the party has their ‘unconditional support’. However, it was also learnt that a few of the Independents were not in favour of the BJP continuing its alliance with the JJP.
JJP’s Devender Babli, who had been known for criticising his own partymen on several occasions, had also recently met Deb in New Delhi. Several other BJP as well as JJP leaders have also met Deb in New Delhi and in Chandigarh.
“If BJP wins Adampur, its number will reach 41. The Independents are already being approached by the BJP high command. If they get into BJP, it would surely increase worries for JJP. Babli is also recently inducted into the Cabinet as Panchayats minister. He had also been raising issues against his own party on several occasions. BJP, getting one additional seat from Adampur, would certainly put the party into a better position and may change the dynamics of the alliance,” one of the MLAs told The Indian Express.
The four main candidates
* Bhavya Bishnoi, BJP – He is the grandson of Haryana’s three-time chief minister Bhajan Lal and son of four-time MLA and two-time MP Kuldeep Bishnoi. Bhavya will be contesting his second election after facing a humiliating defeat in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, where he even lost his security deposit. Bureaucrat-turned-politician Brijendra Singh, son of former Union minister Birender Singh, won the Hisar Lok Sabha seat with record votes. Bhavya, who had then contested his maiden election on a Congress ticket, even failed to get one-sixth of the total votes polled. Bhavya stayed abroad for many years before he returned to Haryana in an attempt to be part of his family legacy by joining active politics. According to Bhavya, he is currently enrolled in a Master’s in Public Administration from John F Kennedy School, Harvard University. He is also running the Bhajan Global Impact Foundation in the name of his grandfather Bhajan Lal through which numerous charitable works are being performed.
* Jai Prakash, Congress – Congress nominee Jai Prakash, 67, a native of Dubbal village in Kaithal, is a veteran politician of Haryana who had represented Hisar constituency thrice – 2004-2009, 1996-1998, and 1989-1991. Adampur falls under Hisar Lok Sabha seat. Jai Prakash had also served as a deputy Union minister in the Cabinet of former Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar. He also represented the Kalayat Assembly constituency from 2014 to 2019. Jai Prakash also holds the distinction of reaching Lok Sabha thrice, each time from a different political party. He began his political career with Indian National Lok Dal’s founder Devi Lal in the 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 in 2004 on a Congress ticket. In 1996, as a Haryana Vikas Party nominee, Jai Prakash had contested from Narwana Assembly constituency against Randeep Singh Surjewala and lost by nearly 400 votes. In 2009, he lost both the polls that he contested – Assembly polls from Adampur and Lok Sabha polls from Hisar. Two years later, he lost the Hisar Lok Sabha bypoll in 2011. Jai Prakash contested Haryana Vidhan Sabha polls as an Independent candidate from Kalayat constituency in 2014 and defeated then INLD candidate Rampal Majra. In 2019, however, he lost from Kayalat Assembly constituency to BJP’s Kamlesh Dhanda.
* Satender Singh, AAP – A farmer with a law degree, Satender Singh, 45, who runs an LPG distributorship in Hisar, said he feels “cheated” by the BJP and joined the Aam Aadmi Party on September 7. A month later, AAP declared him as the party nominee for the upcoming high-stake battle of Adampur. Singh began his political career by being a member of the National Students Union of India (NSUI) in 1996-97. He subsequently remained associated with the Youth Congress and was eventually declared a Congress nominee for Adampur in the 2014 Assembly polls. He lost to Kuldeep Bishnoi. Ahead of the 2019 polls, Singh switched over to BJP, saying Chief Minister Khattar “promised” him that he would be declared the party’s nominee from Adampur. BJP, however, picked Tik-Tok star and actor Sonali Phogat, who recently passed away in Goa, to take on Kuldeep. Singh hails from Hisar’s Neoli Khurd village in Adampur Tehsil. He is also the state president of All India LPG Distributor Federation. Singh is married to Neelam, his partner in the LPG distributorship, and they have two children Khushi and Bharat. He completed his graduation in Arts from Government College, Hisar and then secured a law degree from Delhi University.
* Kurdaram Nambardar, INLD – A native of Hisar district, Kurdaram Nambardar had spent over four decades in Congress. He was hopeful of getting the party ticket but was not considered. He quit Congress and joined INLD. The next day, INLD fielded him as its nominee in Adampur. While in the Congress, Kurdaram had led an agitation seeking canal water for the fields bordering Rajasthan. He had also opened a Congress office in Adampur in the hope that the party would field him. After the Congress declared Jai Prakash as its nominee, Kurdaram removed all party posters from the office and quit the party.
Looking to break the bypoll jinx
After two consecutive defeats in two bypolls since it came to power in October 2019, the BJP-JJP coalition in Haryana is trying hard to break the jinx this time around. The November 3 Adampur bypoll will be the third bypoll that the coalition is contesting. The coalition faced its first bypoll test in Baroda constituency in November 2020 where its celebrity candidate, ace wrestler Yogeshwar Dutt, was defeated by Congress’ rookie candidate Indu Raj Narwal by a margin of over 10,000 votes.
The second bypoll took place in October 2021 in Ellenabad, following Abhay Chautala’s resignation in support of the farmers protesting against three central farm legislations. The BJP-JJP alliance threw its weight behind Haryana Lokhit Party MLA Gopal Kanda’s brother Gobind and declared him as its candidate to take on Abhay. Despite the backing of the BJP and JJP and the Kanda brothers’ own clout in the area, Gobind lost.
