Gurugram: With the party failing to open its account in the Lok Sabha polls and registering just 0.87 percent of the vote share, the Jannayak Janata Party (JJP) faces uncertain times and, worse, little time to regroup in Haryana.
Given that the state election is due in October, followers of JJP leader Dushyant Chautala will be praying that the former deputy chief minister repeats an encore of 2019 when it won 10 seats in the assembly elections after drawing a blank in the parliamentary polls.
The JJP remained in power in alliance with the BJP in Haryana for over four years from October 2019 till March 2024. But, the BJP snapped its ties with the JJP after the regional party pressed for a share in the Lok Sabha seats.
Dushyant then fielded his candidates on all 10 parliamentary seats in Haryana. However, all of them fared very poorly — none got enough votes to save their security deposits.
Candidates have to secure at least one-sixth of the valid polled votes to save their security deposits. In most of Haryana’s parliamentary constituencies, over 12 lakh valid votes were polled.
The JJP had fielded Dushyant’s mother and two-time MLA Naina Chautala from Hisar, but she got 22,032 votes. Former MLA Rao Bahadur Singh, candidate from Bhiwani-Mahindragarh, managed just 15,265 votes.
Singer-rapper Rahul Yadav Fazilpuria from Gurgaon polled just 13,278 votes. In Sirsa, the home district of Chautalas, Ramesh Khatak could get only 20,080 votes.
Political analyst Pawan Kumar Bansal said that the JJP and the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) have both performed badly in the parliamentary election, getting 0.87 percent and 1.74 percent vote share, respectively.
“However, the major difference between the two parties is that INLD leader Abhay Singh Chautala resigned as MLA in support of farmers, while the JJP has an anti-farmers tag. The party sought votes of farmers against the BJP in 2019 and then supported the same party to form the government. When farmers protested in Delhi for more than a year, the JJP kept enjoying power,” Bansal told ThePrint.
He said that while the INLD’s future in the assembly polls will depend on its supremo and Om Prakash Chautala’s health, the JJP is certain to face a bleak future. O.P. Chautala is the grandfather of Dushyant.
JJP supremo Ajay Singh Chautala, however, claimed that this parliamentary election was different and added that the situation would be much different at the time of the assembly polls.
“This time, people voted in favour of the Congress to punish the BJP. Even people from our own community told us that this time they would not like to waste their vote, as it would help the BJP. The issues will be entirely different once assembly elections come, and I am sure the JJP will perform much better than its 2019 performance,” Chautala told ThePrint Wednesday.
The JJP was founded in December 2018 following a family rift in the O.P. Chautala clan. Dushyant and his younger brother Digvijay were suspended from the INLD after a show of strength by their supporters in a rally to mark the party’s patriarch Chaudhary Devi Lal’s birth anniversary at Gohana on 23 September, 2018.
The JJP made its electoral debut in the Jind assembly by-poll in 2019, but Digivijay did not end on the winner’s podium. However, he was able to push Randeep Singh Surjewala of the Congress to third position, while BJP’s Krishan Middha won the election.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the JJP drew a blank with a vote share of 4.9 percent. Dushyant lost from Hisar, a seat he won in 2014 as an INLD candidate, to Brijendra Singh of the BJP.
But, the JJP won 10 assembly seats with a vote share of 14.8 percent in October that year and went on to partner the BJP — which won 40 seats in the 90-member House — to run a coalition government in Haryana.
The bonhomie ended in March this year when the BJP dropped Dushyant and JJP ministers during the change of guards in the state whereby the senior ally replaced Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar with Nayab Singh Saini.
During their campaign, Dushyant and his party candidates faced protests by farmers just like the BJP candidates. In April, Dushyant’s father Ajay Singh Chautala had expressed his willingness Monday to rejoin INLD should his father and INLD chief O.P. Chautala extended an invitation. It now remains to be seen what route the five-year-old party takes to drag itself from this tough situation.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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