State Election Commissioner Devinder Singh Kalyan on Monday announced the schedule for the three municipal corporation elections, declaring that polling will be held on 10 May with a repoll, if necessary, on 12 May and results on 13 May.
Elections to the Rewari Municipal Council and the municipal committees of Dharuhera, Sampla and Uklana, along with panchayati raj by-elections, including for the Zila Parishads, will also be held simultaneously.
Of the 11 Municipal Corporations in Haryana, including the three going to the polls now, only Manesar has an independent Mayor in Inderjeet Kaur, while the other 10 have BJP mayors.
For the Congress that swept five of Haryana’s 10 Lok Sabha seats just months before unexpectedly losing power in the October 2024 Assembly elections, despite widespread anti-incumbency against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the upcoming civic polls will test its ability to regain lost ground.
The geography makes this particularly pointed. Both Ambala and Panchkula municipal corporations fall within the Ambala Lok Sabha constituency, a seat the Congress won in 2024 with Varun Chaudhry as its MP.
Sonipat Municipal Corporation sits within the Sonipat Lok Sabha seat, won by Satpal Brahmchari of the Congress. Yet when Assembly elections came around months later, the Congress’s performance in these very areas told a different story.
Of the nine Assembly seats under Sonipat, the Congress managed to win just two—Julana, where wrestler-turned-politician Vinesh Phogat triumphed, and Baroda, won by Indu Raj Narwal.
Six seats—Rai, Kharkhida, Sonipat, Gohana, Safidon and Jind—went to the BJP, while Ganaur was captured by Independent Devender Kadyan.
The results in the Ambala Lok Sabha seat were more mixed. While the Congress won six of the nine Assembly seats—Panchkula (Chander Mohan), Naraingarh (Shalley Chaudhary), Ambala City (Nirmal Singh), Mullana (Pooja Chaudhry), Sadhaura (Renu Bala) and Jagadhari (Akram Khan)—the BJP held Kalka (Shakti Rani Sharma), Ambala Cantt (Anil Vij), and Yamunanagar (Ghanshyam Dass).
Notably, Congress MLAs Shalley Chaudhary and Renu Bala are alleged to have voted for the BJP-backed independent in the Rajya Sabha polls in March and are likely to face disciplinary action, an internal crisis the party can ill-afford as it heads into these elections.
Jyoti Mishra, a political analyst and assistant professor of political science at Amity University, Mohali, says the stakes for Congress in these three municipal polls are high.
“These are not routine civic elections. For the Congress, this is essentially a credibility examination. The party entered the 2024 Assembly elections as the frontrunner and came out humiliated,” she said.
“Municipal corporation elections, especially in cities that fall within Lok Sabha constituencies the party holds, give it a chance to demonstrate that October 2024 was an aberration and not a trend. Losing these would deepen the narrative that Congress struggles to convert momentum into electoral victories in Haryana.”
Confident note
Haryana Congress president Rao Narender Singh struck a confident note on Monday. He told ThePrint the party was “fully prepared” and would contest all three corporation elections on the party symbol with an intent to win.
He drew a distinction with the smaller elections, saying the party would not contest the Rewari Municipal Council or the three municipal committee polls on a party symbol—a position he noted the BJP also follows.
“Even the BJP contests only corporation elections on the party symbol,” he said.
BJP state spokesperson Sanjay Sharma sounded confident too. The party had been preparing well in advance and had already assigned specific responsibilities to its leaders for all three corporations, he said.
“The BJP started preparing for the polls well in advance and the party has already assigned duties to its leaders for the three municipal corporations,” he said. “We will win all three corporations and will have our mayors after the polls.”
For the Congress, the results of the Assembly elections in these regions still sting. It suffered a shock defeat even though it commanded considerable public sympathy against a three-term BJP government. The municipal polls will test whether it can recover lost ground.
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)
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