Haryana, J&K results hold one lesson—INDIA alliance should be the face in fight against BJP

The BJP is flush with resources. And it will stop at nothing to win. The Congress must recognise the challenge it faces and realise only the INDIA alliance can take this on.

File photo of an INDIA alliance meeting | ANI

This year is turning out to be the year of big election surprises. In the General Election campaign, BJP declared it would get `400 paar’ seats but ended up at only 240, falling well short of the majority mark. Now, in the Haryana assembly polls, where the Congress appeared certain of a major victory, the incumbent BJP will form the government. This is after, given the high levels of public anger and disenchantment, not a single exit poll predicted a BJP win.

And in the Jammu & Kashmir assembly elections, where exit polls predicted a hung assembly, the Congress-National Conference alliance has won a clear victory.

This round of elections has delivered a reality check to both the national parties. The Congress was unable to beat the BJP in Haryana, but in Kashmir, an assertive regional force, the Abdullahs-led National Conference showed that it possesses the durability and local connect needed to conquer the BJP election machine.

In the 2024 General Elections, the biggest gains for the Opposition came from states with strong regional parties, the DMK in Tamil Nadu, TMC in West Bengal, Shiv Sena (UBT)-NCP(SP) alliance in Maharashtra and Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh. Regional parties fought hard and aggressively pushed the BJP on the back foot. The Congress won 99 seats but it was the INDIA alliance with its galaxy of tall leaders like MK Stalin, Mamata Banerjee and Sharad Pawar that collectively pushed the Opposition seat tally to 234. The importance of regional parties in challenging the BJP cannot and should not be underestimated.

A self-destructive mindset

In Haryana, the overwhelming impression was that 10 years of a poorly performing BJP government was enough for it to be ousted. In these circumstances a certain complacency and overconfidence took hold. The fact that Selja Kumari, the Congress’ primary Dalit face in Haryana, was not given much visibility in the campaign, that she looked rather isolated, even someone deliberately keeping away from the campaign,  did not send out the right message to Dalits, the community that had strongly supported the Congress in the Lok Sabha polls.
The veteran Jat leader 77-year-old Bhupinder Singh Hooda was the Congress’ sole face. As a result, the party conveyed the message that its approach in Haryana was Jat-centric. In a state where backward castes have consolidated around the BJP in recent years, a single caste, single leader-centric campaign backfired.

When the Aam Aadmi Party, an ally of the Congress in the Lok Sabha polls, wanted half a dozen seats, the Congress chose to ignore it, convinced of the certainty of victory. Yet Rahul Gandhi himself had been a votary of such an alliance. The certainty of victory is a self-destructive mindset in electoral politics. If a party becomes convinced that it is cruising smoothly through a lamppost election, in which victory is inevitable, traditional caste factors and social engineering alliances are often ignored. As a result, the crucial seat-by-seat, on-ground micromanagement of candidates went missing.

Results show that Congress had no strategies in place to ensure that a Jat versus non-Jat consolidation did not take place in individual seats.

In Haryana’s Jat heartland, the Jind-Sonipat region, where the Congress was expecting to dominate, it surprisingly lost a majority of the seats. One of the few to win was Vinesh Phogat. The presence of Jat candidates, as well as Congress rebels in every seat ensured multipolar contests, to the advantage of the BJP. The BJP shrewdly ensured a mix of candidates and polarisation and division of votes. The BJP also took the risk of dropping several sitting MLAs, unlike the Congress which stuck to the same faces. This is the canny micro-level planning that the Congress seemed to lack.

Don’t fight alone

Contrast the Congress’ Haryana botch-up with its approach in Jammu & Kashmir. Here, the party worked in alliance with a strong Kashmir valley-based mainstream force like the National Conference. It ceded space and a leadership role to the locally embedded NC, which was front and centre of the Kashmir campaign. This strategy carried the alliance to an emphatic victory.

This is the INDIA alliance model: Recognising the importance of regional parties and creating a broader platform. Regional parties have penetrated deep into the communities and localities of their states and can thus challenge the RSS foot soldiers in every nukkad (corner) and mohalla (neighbourhood).

The ‘Ekla Chalo Re‘ or ‘I will walk alone’ approach of the Congress doesn’t work in state elections. The results of the Haryana and J&K polls reaffirm that the INDIA alliance must be the face in the fight against the BJP. Congress is an important and integral element in the alliance, but it cannot hope for too many wins if it fights alone. The INDIA alliance, consisting of tough regional forces, is the main opposition to the BJP.

A buried myth

Let’s now analyse the BJP. BJP has every reason to celebrate its victory in Haryana. But very conveniently, the BJP-friendly mainstream media is glossing over the party’s miserable failure in Jammu & Kashmir. Its attempts to prop up independents and gerrymandering constituencies across the state did not work. It failed to build a political majority by trying to change demographic majorities.

The BJP’s “Naya Kashmir” myth lies buried. The NC swept the Kashmir Valley, BJP failed to win a single seat. It only scored in parts of Jammu, which has anyway been its bastion.

In 2019 the Modi-led BJP not only abrogated Article 370 but downsized India’s only Muslim-majority state Jammu & Kashmir from a state to a Union Territory. Since then, the BJP has been spreading the myth that Kashmiris have enthusiastically embraced the idea of “Naya Kashmir.” The elections show otherwise.

If Kashmiris were truly euphoric about “Naya Kashmir,” why has BJP failed in the Kashmir Valley? Kashmiri voters do not approve of downsizing the state to a union territory.

So where do we stand after this cycle of elections? The Modi factor exists but is diminished. The Rahul Gandhi factor exists but cannot, on its own, take on the might of the BJP machine.

In the 1980s, the election wizard, Prannoy Roy coined the term—Index of Opposition Unity—(IOU). IOU meant that defeating the then-dominant Congress depended on how united the Opposition was.

Decades later there’s still an IOU in Indian politics. But today the IOU is ranged against the dominant BJP.

The BJP is flush with resources. And it will stop at nothing. It will use sam(persuasion), daam (money), dand (force), bhed (create divisions) to win at all costs. It will misuse federal agencies, pour money into vote-focused schemes like the Ladki Bahin scheme in Maharashtra, ensure the Election Commission separates the Haryana and Maharashtra elections, and release a convicted rapist and murderer like Gurmeet Ram Rahim all to bolster its election prospects.

The Congress must recognise the challenge it faces and realise that only a coalition of strong leaders can take on this malign force. The need is for a genuine INDIA alliance which respects and recognises state leaders, where the Congress works in genuine partnership to ensure the BJP’s strategy of divide and rule does not triumph.

In these elections, the score is INDIA-1 and BJP-1. The remaining 2024 Assembly polls of Maharashtra and Jharkhand now become an even more important tiebreaker. There can be no more self-goals.

Sagarika Ghose is a Rajya Sabha MP, All India Trinamool Congress. She tweets @sagarikaghose. Views are personal.

(Edited by Theres Sudeep)