Blitz Bureau
CHANDIGARH Olympian wrestler Vinesh Phogat on October 8 won her debut election, getting elected from Julana seat in Jind district even as her Congress faced an uphill task in the Haryana Assembly elections.
Phogat secured a total of 65,080 votes to defeat her Bharatiya Janata Party rival, professional pilot Yogesh Bairagi, by a margin of 6,015 votes. While Bairagi, who is the vice president of the party’s state youth wing and also making his electoral debut, got 59,065 votes, Surender Lather of the Indian National Lok Dal was the distant third with 10,158 votes.
Sitting MLA Amarjeet Dhanda of the regional outfit Jannayak Janta Party (JJP), an offshoot of the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD), only got 2,477 votes.
Meanwhile. the AAP’s high-profile candidate Kavita Dalal, India’s first woman World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) wrestler, only managed 1,280 votes.
The contest in Julana was touted as between a ‘beti’ (daughter)against a ‘bahu’ (daughter-in-law) as Dalal hails from Julana, while Phogat belongs to Balali in Charkhi Dadri district but her in-laws belong to Julana.
