Chandigarh: The ruling BJP is projected to win four to eight out of Haryana’s 10 Lok Sabha constituencies, while the Opposition INDIA bloc is likely to bag two to six seats in the 2024 elections, according to Matrize Exit Poll.
In the 2019 parliamentary elections, the BJP won all 10 seats.
A total of 223 candidates are in the fray for 10 seats whose polling was held in the sixth phase on May 25. The prominent candidates are Union Ministers Rao Inderjit Singh (Gurgaon) and Krishan Pal Gurjar (Faridabad), two-time Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar from Karnal (all BJP), while from the Congress, leading candidates are Deepender Hooda (Rohtak), former Union Minister Kumari Selja (Sirsa-reserved), and Raj Babbar (Gurgaon).
Besides the Lok Sabha polls, there was a by-poll for the Karnal Assembly seat, the seat vacated by Khattar, where Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini, the outgoing MP in the Lok Sabha from Kurukshetra, was among the nine candidates in the fray. Saini had replaced Khattar as the Chief Minister in March.
Regional outfits, the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) and its offshoot the Jannayak Janta Party (JJP), which bank heavily on its traditional Jat votes, comprising 28 per cent of the state’s population, contested on seven and 10 seats, respectively. The BSP has fielded candidates for nine seats.
In 2019, the BJP won all 10 constituencies, with a vote share of 58 per cent, improving its tally from 2014 when it managed to win seven out of the eight constituencies it had contested. However, BJP’s vote share slipped to 22 per cent in the Assembly polls in October 2019.
(IANS)
