Chandigarh: With the BJP repeatedly hinting that it would contest all 10 Lok Sabha seats in Haryana alone in next year’s general elections, its ally in the state, the Jannayak Janata Party (JJP), is also upping the ante for the assembly polls scheduled for October 2024.
On Sunday, the JJP launched ‘Mission Dushyant 2024’ at its Nav Sankalp rally in Julana town of Jind district — part of the Sonipat Lok Sabha constituency — projecting party leader and Haryana deputy chief minister Dushyant Chautala as its CM candidate for next year’s state polls.
Party leaders led by Dushyant’s father and JJP national president Ajay Singh Chautala announced at the rally that they would “ensure that the key to open the lock of the Haryana government comes into the hands of the JJP”. The ‘key’ is the election symbol of the JJP.
“We will open the lock of the Haryana Vidhan Sabha in 2024. We will also ensure our presence in the Lok Sabha by performing well in next year’s polls,” Dushyant told the gathering at the rally.
Under Mission Dushyant 2024, the JJP has set a target of “increasing vote share from 17 percent (in the 2019 assembly polls) to 51 percent” in next year’s state polls, and drawn up plans to hold rallies in all 10 Lok Sabha constituencies, Ajay Chautala told the gathering.
The party also aims to increase its number of MLAs from 10 (2019 assembly polls) to 46 in the 2024 assembly polls, he said.
Apart from that, the party plans to have booth workers — booth yodhas (male) and booth sakhis (females) for all polling booths in Haryana.
“Sar pe thandak, zubaan mein mithas, pairon mein raftar aur party ka prachar (a cool head, sweet tongue, swift feet and campaign for party) are the key to achieving Mission Dushyant 2024,” Dushyant said at Sunday’s rally.
Speaking to ThePrint Monday, Nishan Singh, JJP’s Haryana president, said party workers had been asked to immediately begin efforts to achieve Mission Dushyant 2024.
Asked how the mission was possible with the JJP in alliance with the BJP in Haryana and Dushyant asserting last month that the partnership would continue — the JJP currently holds 10 seats in the assembly, while the BJP holds 40 — Singh said that “every party makes efforts to come to power, and the JJP’s mission was in that direction only”.
He added: “As far as the alliance with the BJP is concerned, it was clear from day one that the two parties had entered into a post-poll pact (in 2019) for five years to provide a stable government to the people. The alliance has done exceedingly well in that direction.”
“Now, once the alliance will be completing five years, leaders of the two parties will sit and decide whether to continue the partnership and under what conditions,” he further said.
Also Read: Khattar takes swipe at JJP MLA, but says ‘alliance for public good, will continue’
‘Intact and getting stronger’
The JJP’s Mission Dushyant 2024 comes amid rumours of rift between Haryana’s ruling alliance partners and public declarations by Union home minister Amit Shah and other BJP leaders about the party’s intent to contest on all 10 Lok Sabha seats. The BJP currently holds all the seats.
In a rally in Haryana’s Sirsa on 19 June, Shah had appealed to people to make the “lotus” (BJP’s poll symbol) bloom on all 10 seats in the state.
It was for the second time Shah had spoken on those lines. Before this, Shah had in January this year appealed to people to help repeat the BJP’s victory on all 10 seats in Haryana in 2024.
Several other BJP leaders, including the party’s in-charge for Haryana, Biplab Kumar Deb, state BJP chief O.P. Dhankar, former Union minister Chaudhary Birender Singh and former minister Captain Abhimanyu, have also expressed views against continuation of the party’s alliance with the JJP.
In an interview with ThePrint last month, Dushyant Chautala had said the BJP was preparing to contest all 10 seats in next year’s Lok Sabha elections, and so was the JJP. At the same time, he had asserted that the alliance with the BJP was “intact and getting stronger”.
“In the past three-and-a-half years, this is the only question that the media has asked me: ‘till when will the BJP-JJP alliance continue?’ CM Manohar Lal Khattar and I have made it clear on multiple occasions that the alliance is intact, and only getting stronger. We entered into the alliance with the aim to make Haryana a more progressive state,” he had told ThePrint.
Meanwhile, talking about the JJP’s ‘Mission Dushyant’, Singh reiterated that party workers had been asked to win 46 seats — which is more than half of Haryana assembly’s 90 seats — and had been given the roadmap to achieve this through “booth yodhas” and “booth sakhis” and tasked with reaching out to people to support the party.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
Also Read: BJP switches to election mode in Haryana: Amit Shah rally, drive to clinch Chautala strongholds