New Delhi: Savitri Jindal, India’s richest woman, entered the poll arena in Haryana as an independent and won against the BJP by 18,941 votes.
The mother of BJP’s Kurukshetra MP Naveen Jindal, she was up against senior BJP leader and incumbent MLA Kamal Gupta.
The Jindal Group chairperson emeritus decided to contest as an independent from Hisar after she failed to get a BJP ticket. “People of Hisar are my family and it is they who wanted me to contest,” Jindal told news agency PTI after announcing her nomination. She said, if elected, she would strongly raise the voice of her constituents in the Vidhan Sabha.
With a net worth of $36.3 billion, Savitri Jindal stands as the fifth-richest Indian, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index released on September 28. She is the richest woman in the country, and also the only woman billionaire among India’s top 10 richest persons. After her husband, Om Prakash Jindal died in 2005, Savitri Jindal took the reins of the conglomerate, which is involved in steel production, power generation, mining, and port facilities.
She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Padma Bhushan, India’s third-highest civilian honour.
The 74-year-old has already represented the Hisar constituency as an MLA twice. She first represented Hisar in the Haryana Assembly in 2005 as a Congress MLA and was re-elected in 2009, later becoming a minister in the Bhupinder Singh Hooda government. After nearly two decades with the Congress, Savitri Jindal joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in March, following in the footsteps of her son Naveen Jindal.
After filing her nomination in September, Jindal said, “I have pledged to serve Hisar for its development and transformation. The people of Hisar are my family and Om Prakash Jindal ji had established my relationship with this family.”
“The Jindal family has always served Hisar. I am fully dedicated to living up to people’s expectations and maintaining their trust,” she added, Hindustan Times reported.
Notably, Hisar, a key Assembly constituency in Haryana, covers the Hisar tehsil and is part of the Hisar Lok Sabha constituency. Founded in 1354 by Firoz Shah Tughlaq, it was originally named Hisar-e-Firoza, later shortened to Hisar under Akbar’s rule.
In recent politics, the Hisar Lok Sabha constituency, comprising nine Vidhan Sabha segments, saw the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) secure a historic win in 2019, breaking the Congress party’s seven-time hold. The seat was dominated by the Bhajan Lal and Devi Lal families for nearly three decades, except for a brief Congress win in 2004.
