Former Deputy Chief Minister and Jannayak Janta Party (JJP) leader Dushyant Singh Chautala is set for a shocking defeat in Uchana Kalan. He had bagged the seat in 2019. This time, he was up against Brijendra Singh of the Congress and BJP's Devender Chaterbhuj Attri.
Attri appears to have managed to pull off the seat in a close fight with Brijendra Singh. After all 16 rounds of counting, Attri secured 48,788 votes, while Singh got 48,749 - a margin of just 39 votes. Dushyant Chautala came in the fourth position, with just 7920 votes - a massive drop for a man who served as deputy chief minister for about 4.5 years.
The Election Commission is yet to announce the winner. However, Attri, after all rounds of counting, is ahead by 39 votes.
Chautala, the grandson of former Haryana chief minister Om Prakash Chautala, is squaring off with Brijendra, and Devender Chaterbhuj Attri of the BJP. The AAP has also fielded Pawan Fauji. Brijendra Singh is a bureaucrat-turned-politician and former MP from Hisar. He and his father Birender Singh quit the BJP earlier this year and joined the Congress.
The Uchana Kalan assembly constituency falls in the Jind district, considered the state's political heartland. In this assembly elections, Uchana Kalan became the battleground for two prominent political dynasties, pitting Dushyant Chautala, great-grandson of former Deputy Prime Minister Devi Lal, against Brijendra Singh, son of former Union Minister Birender Singh, in a well-known family rivalry.
Birender Singh, the grandson of farmer leader Sir Chhotu Ram, had joined the BJP ahead of the Haryana elections in 2014, breaking his over four-decade-old ties with the Congress. Before Dushyant Chautala won the Uchana Kalan assembly seat, it was considered a bastion of the Birender Singh family.
The former Union Minister himself was a five-time MLA from the constituency. His son Brijendra Singh was a BJP MP from Hisar before he quit the party ahead of the Lok Sabha polls. In 2019, Dushyant Chautala lost the election to the Hisar parliamentary seat to him.
Brijendra Singh, however, does not see Dushyant Chautala as his main political opponent from Uchana Kalan. "The main contest is with the BJP," he asserted. The ruling BJP in the state has fielded Devender Chatar Bhuj Attri as its candidate for the Uchana Kalan seat.
Dushyant Chautala won the seat in 2019, defeating Brijendra’s mother Prem Lata Singh by over 47,000 votes. Prem Lata had defeated Chautala in 2014.
Brijendra Singh holds a master's degree in Public Policy and Management from Kings College in London. Before joining politics more than five years ago, he took voluntary retirement from the Indian Administrative Service after working for over 20 years.
Dushyant Chautala holds a bachelor's degree in Business Administration from California State University. During poll campaign, he promised 50 per cent reservation to women in teaching jobs in government institutions and a Rs 21,000 monthly honorarium for Anganwadi and Accredited Social Health Activists.
JJP and Chandra Shekhar Azad's Azad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram) jointly contested the Haryana assembly polls.