Adampur bypoll: After three rounds of counting, BJP leading, Congress close; AAP, INLD appears out of race
After three rounds of counting of votes for the Adampur bypoll in Haryana’s Hisar district Sunday, the BJP maintained a lead with Congress on the second spot as the Aam Aadmi Party and INLD appeared to be out of the race.
The BJP maintained a lead of 6235 votes after three out of 13 rounds of counting. By the end of three rounds, the BJP’s Bhavya Bishnoi had got 17633 votes, Congress’ Jai Prakash 11398 votes, INLD’s Kurdaram Nambardar 740 votes, and AAP’s Satender Singh had got 380 votes.
In the first round, Bhavya Bishnoi, former Haryana chief minister Bhajan Lal’s younger son, got 6399 votes, Jai Prakash got 3567, Satender Singh got 175 and Kurdaram Nambardar got 168 votes. In the next round, Bhavya Bishnoi got 4379 votes, Jai Prakash got 5233, Satender Singh got 145 and Kurdaram Nambardar got 467 votes. In the third round, Bhavya Bishnoi got 6855 votes and Jai Prakash 2598 votes, Kurdaram Nambardar 105 votes and Satender Singh got 60 votes.
The Bishnoi family seemed extremely confident about Bhavya Bishnoi’s victory in Adampur, which has been their bastion. The members of the family have represented the seat for over five decades. “Bhavya will win by a margin of over 30,000 votes. It is going to be a victory for the people of Adampur,” his father Kuldeep Bishnoi had said in the morning before the counting began.
“Right from the beginning, it was always a battle of winning the margin for us. The people of Adampur had always been blessing us. The entire constituency is my family. Once again, Adampur will celebrate Diwali today,” said Bhavya Bishnoi.
The AAP’s Satender Singh appeared to have realised that he was out of the race. Talking to reporters in Adampur, Singh said, “It appeared that people of Adampur did not vote for the issues like education or health infrastructure. Rather, BJP and Congress succeeded in keeping the election around the issues of religion, casteism, nepotism, and family legacy. I have yet not accepted my defeat because it has been only three rounds and 10 more rounds are yet to go”.
A four-time MLA from the seat, Kuldeep had been batting for his son’s nomination for the seat for some time by saying that the “people of Adampur wanted his son to contest the bypoll” and “that he had conveyed the sentiment to the party”. Finally, the BJP declared Bhavya Bishnoi as its nominee for Adampur and the JJP supported him.
The bypoll was necessitated after Kuldeep Bishnoi resigned as an MLA and jumped ship to the BJP from the Congress in August.
Total votes to be counted: 1,31,401
Total rounds of counting: 13
Total polling booths where votes were polled: 180
Total candidates in fray: 22
Main political parties and their candidates in race: BJP-JJP’s Bhavya Bishnoi, Congress’ Jai Prakash, AAP’s Satender Singh and INLD’s Kurdaram Nambardar.
