BJP wins Jind Assembly seat; Congress, INLD bite dust (Fourth Lead)

Establishing it grip on state politics just ahead of the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections, Haryana's ruling BJP won the Jind Assembly seat in a multi-cornered contest on Thursday by 12,935 votes.

BJP candidate Krishan Lal Middha was declared elected after getting 50,566 votes. The winner will have a tenure of only nine months before the next Assembly polls.

This is the first time the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) bagged the Jind assembly seat, making a new beginning in this "Jat" land seat.

A visibly happy Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar said in Chandigarh: "People have again reposed their faith in the policies, governance and transparency of the BJP government in the state and the Centre. BJP workers worked hard."

Middha, a non-Jat candidate, is the son of two-time INLD legislator Hari Chand Middha, who passed away in August last year.

The recently launched Jannayak Janata Party (JJP) made an impressive debut in the by-election by finishing second. Its candidate, young turk Digvijay Singh Chautala, got 37,631 votes.

The Congress, which fielded a "strong candidate" in Randeep Surjewala, the party's national spokesman, finished a poor third with just 22,740 votes.

The Indian National Lok Dal (INLD), which won the Jind seat in the last two Assembly elections, fared miserably. The INLD finished fifth among leading parties, getting only 3,454 votes.

The Loktantar Suraksha Party (LSP), launched by rebel BJP MP Raj Kumar Saini, got 13,582 votes to finish at the fourth position.

Voting took place on January 28 with nearly 76 per cent of the 1.72 lakh voters exercising their franchise.

The Haryana Police and paramilitary forces used canes to disperse protesters during a demonstration in Jind town during the counting of votes.

Serial numbers of some EVMs (electronic voting machines) did not match with the list and this was objected to by the contesting candidates inside the counting centre.

As the news reached the activists of various parties, the protest started in Jind town, around 190 km from here, following which the police took action to disperse them.

The counting process was stopped for some time after the complaint regarding the EVMs but it resumed later.

Khattar said that people in Haryana will vote for the BJP and the party will win all 10 Lok Sabha seats as well as Assembly elections this year.

The by-election was important for all four major parties in the fray -- the BJP, Congress, INLD and JJP as both Lok Sabha and Assembly elections are to be held later in 2019.

--IANS

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