New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is winning Haryana for the third straight term, a feat unprecedented in the state’s history, shattering the Congress’ hope of ending a decade’s power drought, with it being left to draw cold comfort from the likely clear majority to its alliance with the National Conference in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir.
As the counting progressed, the Congress, which was confident of carrying the momentum of its Lok Sabha performance in the assembly elections, was stunned into silence, while the BJP regained its voice, with its leaders attributing its success to a “pro-incumbency vote” in Haryana.
According to Election Commission’s latest figures, the BJP has won 14 seats in Haryana, and is leading in 36, while the Congress has so far won 15, and ahead in 20 seats. In Jammu and Kashmir, the National Conference has won 36 and is leading in 6, while the Congress has won 6. Both in Haryana and J&K, the halfway mark is 46.
In a near-repeat of the Lok Sabha elections, the exit polls, yet again, bit the dust, as the numbers in Haryana were nowhere close to the projections of a Congress landslide. The pollsters had predicted an overwhelming majority to the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections, in which the party fell well short of the halfway mark of 272 seats.
It’s not just the exit polls though. The turbulence faced by the BJP in the last leg of its second term in Haryana, and the Congress’ victory in 5 of the 10 Lok Sabha seats, had strengthened the impression that a major setback was on the cards for the ruling party in the heartland state having an influential agrarian community comprising the Jats.
To counter the Congress’ edge due to the Jat factor, the BJP had over the last decade assiduously built a social coalition of non-dominant castes. That paid dividends to the BJP, but at one point, it appeared that the anger among the farmers and the youth, over the implementation of the Agnipath recruitment scheme in the armed forces, would undo those gains.
The controversy over allegations that former BJP MP Brij Bhushan Singh sexually abused celebrated wrestlers hailing from Haryana added fuel to fire. The BJP sought to course correct by replacing Manohar Lal Khattar with OBC leader and former Kurukshetra MP Nayab Singh Saini as the CM ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, while also playing the Brahmin card by making first-time MLA Mohan Lal Badoli as its state chief.
But, in the end, the Congress failed to translate that palpable resentment on the ground into votes, unlike in the Lok Sabha polls, held barely five months ago. Assembly elections were held in Haryana on 5 October, while in Jammu and Kashmir, which is a Union Territory, polls were held in three phases: 18 and 25 September, and 1 October.
The Congress’ setback portends a rocky road ahead of the next round of assembly polls in Jharkhand and Maharashtra, due in November. While it is campaigning aggressively in Jharkhand along with its alliance partner Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) to retain power, in Maharashtra, the party had so far displayed a Haryana-level confidence.
Tuesday’s verdict will, however, send it back to the drawing board. Its allies such as the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) and NCP (Sharad Pawar) will also use the opportunity to arm twist in the ongoing seat-sharing negotiations.
Currently, the BJP has chief ministers in 13 states, including Haryana. The Congress has CMs in Karnataka, Telangana, and Himachal Pradesh. Apart from Himachal Pradesh, the Congress has failed to register victory in any state from the Hindi belt since 2018 when it had won Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Rajasthan.
AS for the Jammu and Kashmir polls, most pollsters had projected an edge to the NC-Congress alliance but stopped short of giving it a clear majority, keeping the BJP’s hopes alive that it could have a shot at forming government in the event of a hung House on the back of a strong performance in the Jammu division, and the support of Independents and candidates put up by outfits such as Engineer Rashid’s Awami Ittehad Party.
In the Jammu division, the BJP did perform well, and looks poised to win 29 out of its 43 seats. But its gambit of carving out a space among the Gujjar Bakarwals and Paharis by giving them ST status and reserving 9 seats for them did not yield any result, with the party failing to take lead in even one of them.
(Edited by Tony Rai)