NEW DELHI: Gurugram was Congress’s third consecutive loss, as the BJP candidate and sitting MP Rao Inderjit Singh defeated Raj Babbar with nearly 70,000 votes.
According to Election Commission of India (ECI) data, Singh received 8,05,161 votes (50.44%), while Babbar received 7,31,696 (45.84%).
Babbar, the actor-turned-politician, has faced two successive defeats in 2014 and 2019 against BJP’s General (Retired) VK Singh in Ghaziabad and Raj Kumar Chahar in Fatehpur Sikri, respectively.
According to a leader, the “local versus outsider” factor played against the Congress party. Rao, a veteran five-time parliamentarian who has represented Gurugram three times since 2009, presents himself as a local leader and claims to understand and address the people’s needs and aspirations.
Moreover, the Congress has chosen a candidate who is not from the Yadav community, which has a significant presence in south Haryana. The party sidelined its veteran leader, Captain (Retd) Ajay Singh Yadav.
Meanwhile, Jannayak Janta Party (JJP) candidate Haryanvi singer Rahul Yadav alias ‘Fazilpuria’ could only fetch a little above 13,000 votes and forfeited his election deposit by getting less than 1 per cent of the vote share.