New Delhi: Former Haryana deputy chief minister Dushyant Chautala’s Jannayak Janta Party (JJP) Tuesday struck a seat-sharing pact with Chandrashekhar Azad’s Aazad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram), a move that may upset the Congress’s attempt to consolidate Dalit votes in the poll-bound state.
On its part, the Congress dismissed the alliance as a non-starter, pointing at the JJP’s dismal performance in the recently held Lok Sabha election, and the complete absence of any organisational structure of the Azad-led ASP in Haryana.
According to the 2011 census, the share of Scheduled Castes (SCs) in the population of Haryana stands at 20.2 percent, and as many as 17 seats in the 90-member Haryana assembly are reserved for Dalits, numbers that illustrate the community’s electoral significance.
As a result, the principal political players in the state—be it the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) or its offshoot JJP, or the Congress—have tried to court the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in the past, seeing the Dalit party as their best bet to consolidate the community’s vote. ASP’s rise, primarily owing to Azad’s Lok Sabha win from UP’s Nagina seat, has now placed it in a similar position as the BSP.
However, a Congress leader, who is a part of its candidate screening committee for Haryana, said the party has no reason to be overly concerned with the JJP-ASP tie-up.
Among other reasons, he cited the BSP’s inability to make any significant inroads in the state despite contesting elections over the years. It has never won more than one seat in the assembly elections.
“We are very certain that it will not upset our calculations. The Dalits are firmly with the Congress in Haryana, which has a different terrain as compared to Uttar Pradesh, where the ASP tasted some success,” said the Congress leader.
Under the seat-sharing pact, the JJP will contest 70 of the state’s 90 seats, and the ASP the remaining 20.
The BSP is contesting the polls in Haryana in an alliance with the INLD this time. In 2019, the two parties had allied briefly ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, only to part ways before voting day.
Months later, the BSP had tied up with the JJP, only to snap ties in an identical fashion ahead of the assembly polls held in October.
In 2019, of the 17 seats reserved for the SCs, seven had gone to the Congress, five to the BJP, four to the JJP and one to an Independent. In the 2024 general elections, while both the Congress and BJP won five seats each in the state, the former bagged both the reserved Lok Sabha seats with wide margins.
Speaking to ThePrint, Kewal Dhingra, Haryana Congress spokesperson, said that the JJP-ASP alliance will not have any impact on the outcome of the assembly election, scheduled to be held on 1 October. “In the Lok Sabha election, the vote share of the JJP was 0.87 percent. ASP has no base in Haryana. Zero plus zero will be zero after all,” Dhingra said.
The Congress also feels that the Dalit community will be put off by the JJP’s past alliance with the BJP and its non-committal stance on forming future ties with the BJP. Even during Tuesday’s press conference, Chautala left open the possibility of such a tie-up, in the event of him emerging as a kingmaker in the elections, like in 2019.
“In 2019, going with the Congress would not have resulted in a stable government. On the question (of a similar situation emerging in 2024), let us leave it to the numbers. Who can predict the future,” Chautala said, responding to questions on his equation with the BJP.
Also read: In Kiran Choudhry’s Rajya Sabha nomination, a BJP bid to assuage voters in Haryana’s Jat heartland
The BJP question
In the 2019 Haryana assembly election, the debutant JJP, with 10 MLAs, had emerged as the kingmaker, winning over a substantial chunk of Jats, who, according to estimates by political parties, account for 26 percent of the state’s population. Chautala went on to support the BJP, and became the deputy CM. But in March this year, with Lok Sabha polls knocking on the door, the BJP snapped its ties with the JJP, leaving it high and dry.
Over the past few days, seven of its MLAs have quit the JJP. One has joined the Congress, while two are likely to join the BJP. Chautala downplayed the desertions, saying the Congress and the BJP would face similar desertions after the declaration of candidates by the respective parties.
Even as he left open the option of joining hands with the BJP in a post-poll scenario, Chautala sought to distance himself from the party’s handling of the farmers protests that roiled Haryana and Punjab. “Show me one statement where I supported the farm laws,” he said. Azad also backed him, saying, “History is witness that his (Chautala’s) family has always been with the farmers.”
Ashok Bharti, chairman of the National Confederation of Dalit and Adivasi Organisations (NACDAOR), however, said the Dalits are aware that these political fronts have been “propped up and funded by the BJP, overtly or covertly”.
“We have been working on the ground in Haryana and can clearly see that the Dalit votes are shifting towards the Congress. The Dalit voters know that the JJP does not stand a chance to win and they are in no mood to side with the losing side. Also playing on their minds is the possibility of the JJP siding with the BJP again. The JJP is not helping its cause through its statements such as the one that it is equidistant from the Congress and the BJP,” Bharti said to ThePrint.
At the press conference, Chautala had invoked ties between his great-grandfather Devi Lal and BSP founder Kanshi Ram to present his alliance with Azad as the continuation of a legacy.
“When Kanshi Ram staged a dharna at the Boat Club in Delhi demanding Bharat Ratna for B.R. Ambedkar, Chaudhary Devi Lal (INLD founder) was the first leader to support him. When he (Devi Lal) became the deputy PM, Ambedkar was not just given Bharat Ratna, but his statue was also unveiled at the Parliament,” Chautala said, underlining that both he and Azad were together for the long haul.
“Don’t forget, we are both (aged) 36,” he said with a smile.
(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)
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