It’s BJP’s Haryana face vs ex-student leader in Karnal

The Karnal Lok Sabha constituency is all set to witness a nail-biting contest between an experienced and seasoned politiciancum-strategist and a young and upcoming leader.
As the situation emerges day by day, there is a likelihood of a direct contest between former Haryana chief minister and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Manohar Lal Khattar and Haryana Youth Congress president Divyanshu Budhiraja.Notably, there is so much at stake, when it comes to Khattar.
Seventy-year-old Khattar had been an MLA of Karnal in 2014 and 2019 assembly elections before resigning from the seat in March this year.
A strategist of the party, who has been the CM for two terms, Khattar is the face of the BJP in Haryana for the Lok Sabha as well as the pending assembly elections. The man and brain behind all the new development and other projects undertaken in Haryana since 2014, Khattar is faced with various challenges during this parliamentary elections.
Besides maintaining the winning spree while dealing with the strong undercurrent of anti-incumbency, Khattar has the tough task of maintaining the winning margin set by Sanjay Bhatia in 2019 polls.
The BJP has been winning this seat since 2014, with Ashwani Chopra having got 49.96% of votes that had gone up to 70.08% votes for Sanjay Bhatia in 2019, who had the won with a margin of 6,56,142 votes beating Kuldeep Sharma of the Congress, which is a record.
Khattar has to go around across the state and sometimes out of it for campaigning, which is another challenge, even as he had not even campaigned during assembly elections. A range of issues — such as start up projects, smart city and demands of entrepreneurs of Karnal and Panipat to take out the two districts out of the NCR due to problems faced by them owing to restrictions by the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) in NCR and pollution norms by CPCB — continues to stare Khattar in the face amid candidates seeking elections from this constituency of a mix rural-urban divide in the two districts.
The parliamentary constituency has nine assembly segments spread across Karnal and Panipat districts. Besides the urban areas of the dis- tricts, saffron parties have the challenge of making inroads in rural belts, especially after Tuesday’s development when independent MLAs from Pundri and Nilokheri have announced to support the Congress party.
Besides the support from two independent MLAs, the breather from Punjab and Haryana high court has put Budhiraja in a stronger position.
The 30-year-old young turk who enjoys blessings from the Hoodas — former CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda and Rajya Sabha MP Deepender Hooda — is depending upon cadre votes, Hoodas’ influence, anti-incumbency votes and shift of votes due to resentment among rural folk amid the farmer issues/protests.
Budhiraja is apparently the only politician who had dared to confront Khattar during his programmes.
The only thing common among the two is that both are bachelors as of now.
Khattar had been single throughout but Budhiraja may opt for tying the nuptial knot in the future.
The two other candidates who are in the election fray from Karnal include Devender Kadian from JJP and Virender Maratha from NCP, supported by the INLD.
Maratha has been trying his luck in the past three elections.