Karnal (Haryana): Former Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar has won by over 2 lakh votes in Karnal Lok Sabha seat, according to the latest data by Election Commission of India. Khattar, so far, has polled 683841 votes, defeating Congress candidate Divyanshu Budhiraja by 211260 votes.
Karnal is an agricultural-industrial district in the north-central part of Haryana, In October 2014, when the BJP came to power in Haryana on its own strength for the first time, Khattar, a first-time MLA from Karnal, was made the chief minister. Nine-and-a-half years later, the party handpicked Khattar's protege and Kurukshetra MP Nayab Saini to replace him as chief minister.
The change of guard by the ruling BJP in Haryana came as a big surprise, but Khattar maintains the decision to replace him with Saini as the chief minister was not a sudden one and that he had suggested this to Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than a year ago.
The Karnal assembly seat, vacated by Khattar following his resignation as MLA, was contested by Saini in the bypoll, which was held along with voting for 10 Lok Sabha seats in Haryana in the sixth phase of elections on May 25.
2024 polls: The total number of registered voters in this constituency in 2024 polls was 2104229, and the seat saw a voting turnout of 63.74% (1341174 count of votes), according to the Election Commission’s data. The seat went to polls in phase 6 on May 25, 2024.
In the 2019 LS Polls, Sanjay Bhatia of BJP won from Karnal, getting 911,594 votes, comprising 70.08% of the total number of votes polled. He defeated Kuldip Sharma of Congress by a margin of 656,142 votes. In 2014, Ashwini Kumar of BJP had won from this seat, polling 594,817 votes (49.84%) and defeating Arvind Kumar Sharma of Congress by a margin of 3,60,147 votes.
