Lok Sabha elections: Royal scion faces a 'filmy' challenge in Gurgaon seat

Union minister Rao Inderjit Singh, who has represented the Gurgaon Lok Sabha seat since 2009, has challengers in Congress candidate Raj Babbar and Jannayak Janta Party’s (JJP) Rahul Yadav, a singer-rapper popularly known by his village name ‘Fazilpuria’.

In 1957, freedom fighter and independent India’s first Education Minister, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, represented the seat. The seat was abolished from 1977 to 2008, and subsumed in the Mahendragarh Lok Sabha seat.

Rao Inderjit Singh, a descendant of Rao Tula Ram, who fought in the 1857 War of Independence, was the Congress MP from Gurgaon in 2009, and contested as a BJP MP in 2014 and 2019. He was the Congress MP from the Mahendragarh seat (winning in 1999 and 2004). Singh is the son of former Haryana chief minister Rao Birender Singh, who was also a multiple-term MP.

While Babbar has been a Lok Sabha MP from Uttar Pradesh in the past, he suffered defeats in his recent electoral outings from Ghaziabad and Fatehpur Sikri in 2014 and 2019, respectively.  In Gurgaon, the BJP has termed Babbar as an ‘outsider’. However, the constituency, comprising the urban areas, IT and manufacturing sectors, and Nuh’s rural belt, is a mix of cosmopolitan and traditional. The entry of the JJP, which withdrew support from the BJP government in Haryana in the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls, has made the election interesting, but few expect Rao Inderjit Singh to lose. 

Gurgaon will vote along with nine other Haryana Lok Sabha constituencies on Saturday.