Redemption time for Hoodas in Haryana; BJP will fight to retain Rohtak

Deepender Singh Hooda

Hooda family legacy sits strong in this Lok Sabha constituency and it will be their attempt at redemption in 2024. In the first Parliamentary election of 1952 held in Rohtak, Ranbir Singh Hooda won his way to Lok Sabha on a Congress ticket. In 1991, his son Bhupinder Singh Hooda (Congress) got the better of Chaudhury Devi Lal (then Janata Party) by more than 30,500 votes. That legacy continued, albeit with brief interruptions, with the third generation retaining the seat; till 2019.

And the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will leave no stone unturned to retain the seat in its quest for 400 MPs in Lok Sabha this time. Rohtak Lok Sabha constituency is among Haryana’s 10 Parliamentary seats that will go to polls in Phase 6 of Lok Sabha election 2024 on May 25.

In 2019, the BJP swept the seats in Haryana in its favour, including Rohtak. Last election’s winner (BJP’s Arvind Kumar Sharma) and runner-up (Congress candidate Deepender Singh Hooda) are again in a face-off in 2024.

After Independence, the first two Lok Sabha elections of 1952 and 1957 held here were won by Deepender’s grandfather, Ranbir Singh Hooda of Congress, who was earlier nominated to the Constituent Assembly of India in July 1947. He was also a member of the Provisional Parliament (1950–52). He has even been a minister in undivided Punjab and later, in Haryana. Altogether, he has served in seven different Houses, a record in itself.

Ranbir’s son, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, also of Congress, won from Rohtak in 1991, 1996, 1998, and 2004. The 76-year-old Jat leader has also been a member of the Haryana Legislative Assembly, where he was Leader of Opposition from 2001 to 2004. He was the Chief Minister of Haryana between 2005 and 2014. In the 2019 Haryana Legislative Assembly election, he again won from Garhi Sampla-Kiloi.

The 46-year-old Deepender is a third-generation politician who won here in a bye-election in 2005 when his father, Bhupinder, chose to contest in assembly polls and went on to become the Chief Minister. Deepender retained the seat in 2009 and 2014 elections but lost to BJP’s Arvind Sharma in 2019. He is currently a Congress Rajya Sabha member from Haryana.

BJP nominee Arvind Kumar Sharma (61) is a dental surgeon who has been earlier with the Congress, which he represented in the Lok Sabha, winning from Haryana’s Karnal seat in 2004 and 2009, but lost in 2014 to BJP’s Ashwini Kumar Chopra by about 3.6 lakh votes.

He subsequently quit the Congress and joined Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). His attempts at entering the state assembly in quest to be the Chief Minister of Haryana ended with his defeat from Yamunanagar and Julana seats, when he ended at the third spot in both the seats.

In 2019, he switched over to the BJP and was named candidate from the Rohtak Lok Sabha seat where he defeated Deepender, the Congress nominee, by 7,503 votes.

The ongoing agitation of farmer unions in Haryana is a cause for concern for the BJP nominee, especially in rural areas of Rohtak Parliamentary constituency. After the rollback of the three contentious farm laws, some farmer unions have been demanding legislation of minimum support price (MSP) of certain crops, revision of power bills, etc. It has since turned political and their ire is targeted at the ruling party.

Out of nine assembly segments that constitute Rohtak Lok Sabha constituency. The Congress won seven in the 2019 state election; the BJP and an independent candidate got one each.

In the last Lok Sabha election (2019), there were 17,37,133 electors in this constituency, of which 12,20,571 or 70.26% had turned out for voting.