While Jats have been in majority in the Kurukshetra Lok Sabha constituency for long, no Jat candidate has ever won the parliamentary seat from here, and very few Jats have been candidates here.
In the Parliamentary polls in 2004, the main Jat candidate in the fray was Indian National Lok Dal's Abhey Singh Chautala, son of former Haryana Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala. He was trounced by Naveen Jindal by more than 1.75 lakh votes.
This time around too, no Jat is likely to win the seat Kurukshetra Parliamentary seat. This is because no major party has reposed faith in a Jat candidate for the Lok Sabha poll. This is despite the fact that in the past, both the Congress and the INLD have used the Jat votes in bulk to further their political interests.
This time, the Congress is depending on a bania again - sitting MP Naveen Jindal. The INLD-BJP alliance has put up a Punjabi candidate, Ashok Arora, who happens to be the state president of the party, and BSP has put up a Sikh candidate, Gurdayal Saini. HJC too has put up a Sikh candidate - Jaswant Singh Cheema.
In 1999, again a non-Jat, Kailasho Devi of INLD had won the Kurukshetra seat. Kailasho Devi, who is from the Saini community, defeated the late Congress candidate Om Prakash Jindal, father of Naveen Jindal, by 1.35 lakh votes. O P Jindal had previously won the seat from the same constituency in 1996.
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