Shakti Rani’s parachute lands in Kalka, BJP wrests seat from Congress

BJP candidate Shakti Rani Sharma, 71, was on Tuesday elected Kalka MLA after she defeated incumbent Pradeep Chaudhary of the Congress by 10,833 votes.
Sharma, the lone woman contender from Kalka assembly constituency, got 41.51% vote share as she got 60,612 votes. Though she was trailing to Independent candidate Gopal Sukhomajri in the first three rounds of counting, she maintained a sustained lead since the fourth round. Her winning margin started shrinking from the 12th round onwards but she managed to win by a convincing margin.
Sharma was the richest candidate in Kalka constituency with assets worth ₹144 crore and figures among the top 10 crorepatis in the state.
Dubbed an outsider, she kept her campaign focused on holistic development of Kalka, for which she shared her roadmap, including a manifesto specific to each of the four blocks in the constituency. She promised the revival of HMT, Pinjore, generating job opportunities and sub division status for Raipur Rani and Morni.
Sharma was targeted by her rival Chaudhary, who managed to get 49,729 votes (34.06 vote share), for being an outsider.
BJP knocked at every door
The first woman mayor of Ambala, Sharma is the wife of former Haryana minister Venod Sharma. She had contested from Kalka on the ticket of her husband’s Haryana Jan Chetna Party in 2014 and managed to get 7,661 votes (6.15% vote share).
She is the mother of Rajya Sabha MP Kartikeya Sharma and her eldest son, Siddharth Vashisht, also known as Manu Sharma, was convicted in the infamous Jessica Lal murder case in Delhi in April 1999 and released in June 2020. She is the chairperson of the Sidhartha Vashista Charitable Trust that provides vocational training to jail inmates.
Kalka was high-stakes constituency for the BJP and the saffron party had left no stone unturned to reclaim the seat. BJP senior leaders, such as defence minister Rajnath Singh and Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, had held rallies for her. Former Haryana chief minister and MP Manohar Lal Khattar also held a karyakarta sammelan in Kalka.
The Sharma family campaigned door to door, held nukkad meetings, public meetings, and reached out to each village in the constituency.
Kalka no more Congress stronghold
From 1967 to 2019, the Kalka constituency has seen 14 assembly elections and was once considered the stronghold of former chief minister Bhajan Lal. Former deputy CM Chander Mohan (who won from Panchkula assembly this time), was elected four times in a row from 1993 to 2005.
In 2019, Congress candidate Pradeep Chaudhary had defeated BJP’s Latika Sharma by 5,931 votes. In 2014, Latika Sharma had defeated INLD candidate Pardeep Chaudhary by 19,027 votes and in 2009, while Chaudhary had beaten Congress’s Satvinder Singh Rana by 21,187 votes.
Kalka assembly constituency saw 72.07% turnout this time, a slight dip from 2019 when it recorded 72.46% . In 2014, it recorded 79.31% polling and 77.21% in 2009.
Infighting fails to affect
Shakti Rani Sharma was declared the BJP candidate from Kalka barely four days after she joined the party. Former BJP MLA Latika Sharma had stayed away from her campaign after she was denied the party ticket from Kalka. On polling day, Latika shared a post on social media, showing her to be in Delhi.