The BJP has gained unassailable lead in nine of the ten Lok Sabha seats in Haryana and the fight appears to be only for the Rohtak seat now where Congress' sitting MP Deepender Singh Hooda was putting up a challenge to the saffron party candidate.

If the BJP wins nine or even the tenth seat, it will be the party's best-ever performance, surpassing the previous best in 2014 when it won seven of the eight it contested.

In 1999, when it was in alliance with the Indian National Lok Dal, the BJP had won five seats while the remaining five were won by its ally.

Rohtak was witnessing a see-saw contest between sitting MP Deepender Singh Hooda, who after leading with a margin of more than 13,000 votes at one stage over BJP's Arvind Sharma, was now trailing by over 4500 votes, as per trends available with the Election Commission.

In the remaining nine seats, BJP candidates including five of its sitting MPstwo of them union ministerswere leading by margins ranging between 1 and 4 lakh.

From Karnal, BJP's local leader Sanjay Bhatia was leading over his nearest

Congress rival Kuldeep Sharma by a margin of nearly 4.5 lakh votes. Barring Hisar, from where sitting MP Dushyant Chautala of Jannayak Janata Party was placed at second spot behind BJP's Brijendra Singh, Congress was at second place in the remaining nine seats.

However, opposition INLD continued to suffer electoral rout with its party candidates performing poorly on all ten seats.

For fledgling JJP too the trends were a setback while its ally AAP, which contested three seats, was also left disappointed.

For BSP, contesting eight seats and two by its ally Loktantra Suraksha Party led by BJP's rebel MP from Kurukshetra Raj Kumar Saini, the trends brought bad news.

Barring Deepender Hooda who was still in the fight, candidates from Haryana's famous political clans -- the Chautalas, Bhajan Lals and Bansi Lals are staring at a likely defeat.

After winning seven of the eight seats it contested in 2014, the BJP went on to form its government on its own for the first time in Haryana when assembly polls were held later that year.

The performance in the 2019 LS polls is likely to give a big boost to BJP ahead of Assembly polls.

Union Ministers Rao Inderjit Singh and Krishan Pal Gurjar, both sitting MPs, continued to maintain a healthy lead in their constituencies Gurgaon and Faridabad, over their nearest Congress rivals.

Despite a strong Modi wave in 2014, Congress had managed to win only the Rohtak seat in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, but now it was struggling to hold on to that seat too.

Several stalwarts of the Congress, including Bhupinder Singh Hooda (Sonipat), Kumari Selja (Ambala), state Congress chief Ashok Tanwar (Sirsa), Avtar Singh Bhadana (Faridabad) and Ajay Singh Yadav (Gurgaon), are trailing.

Deepender Hooda's father Bhupinder, a sitting MLA from Rohtak district who contested the Lok Sabha polls after a gap of 14 years, was behind sitting MP Ramesh Chander Kaushik by a margin of over 1.30 lakh votes, as per EC trends.

The performance of Bhupinder Hooda, who had defeated former deputy prime minister Devi Lal from Rohtak LS seat earlier, is set to lend a further setback to the Congress as assembly polls in Haryana are due after four months.

What is likely to add to Congress' worry is the margin with which their candidates are trailing to BJP candidates.

Members of Haryana's famous political families who were trailing included Bhupinder Hooda, Shruti Choudhary (from Bhiwani-Mahendergarh), grand daughter of former chief minister Bansi Lal, Bhavya Bishnoi (from Hisar), grandson of former CM Bhajan Lal, both belonging to the Congress.

Sitting MP from Hisar Dushyant Chautala, the great grandson of Devi Lal, who had launched the JJP after a vertical split in the INLD owing to a family feud, was trailing by nearly 2.40 lakh votes behind BJP's Brijendra Singh, bureaucrat-turned-politician and son of Union Minister Birender Singh.

Dushyant's brother Digvijay Chautala, a JJP candidate, was trailing in Sonipat while their cousin Arjun Chautala, son of senior INLD leader Abhay Singh Chautala, was trailing in Kurukshetra.

First Published:May 23, 2019 2:44 PM IST