The 2024 Lok Sabha contest between the BJP and Congress is crucial in the context of the assembly polls in Haryana, which are due by October.
The contest for the Rohtak Lok Sabha constituency is a re-run of the electoral battle held five years ago.
In the last election, the Congress's Deepender Singh Hooda had lost to the Bharatiya Janata Party's Arvind Sharma by a mere 7,503 votes. They are again face-to-face, making the election on this seat interesting.
The slim margin of Deepender's defeat was the only silver lining for the Congress in the 2019 battle. It lost all ten seats to the BJP in Haryana.
The Congress's loss margin exceeded 300,000 in eight of the seats, including over 600,000 in Faridabad and Karnal.
The other relatively close contest was in Sonepat, where Deepender's father, former Haryana chief minister Bhupender Singh Hooda, lost to the BJP's Ramesh Chander Kaushik by over 150,000 votes.
The 2024 Lok Sabha contest between the BJP and Congress is crucial in the context of the assembly polls in Haryana, which are due by October.
The Congress is confident it will perform well in Rohtak as it currently holds seven of the nine assembly segments under the Lok Sabha seat. The BJP has one seat, while an Independent holds the Meham seat.
Sharma's campaign strategy revolves around leveraging Prime Minister Narendra Modi's popularity. On the other hand, Deepender is highlighting his part in improving Rohtak's infrastructure and the 'growing disillusionment' of the people with the BJP's state government, which replaced Manohar Lal Khattar with Nayab Singh Saini as chief minister of the state.
The Hooda family's political history is intertwined with Rohtak.
Deepender has represented the seat thrice in Parliament, following in the footsteps of his father Bhupender Singh Hooda, who won from the seat on four occasions.
Deepender's grandfather (Bhupender Singh Hooda's father), Ranbir Singh Hooda, was an MP from the seat in 1952 and 1957.
Other stalwarts of Haryana politics, such as Hardwari Lal and former deputy prime minister Devi Lal, have also won from Rohtak.
The Congress has lost the Rohtak seat only twice since 1991. To the BJP in 2019 and to the Indian National Lok Dal in 1999. Polling in Rohtak and Haryana's other Lok Sabha seats is on May 25.
