The leaders of the two parties — the Badals and the Chautalas — have personally shared a family-like bond for decades, but parted ways politically in March 2016 over the SYL issue.
Chandigarh: Haryana’s Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) has ruled out reconciliation with the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), its ally of yore, throwing open a season of fresh coalition hunts ahead of next year’s assembly and Lok Sabha polls.
The leaders of the two parties — the Badals and the Chautalas — have personally shared a family-like bond for decades, but parted ways politically in March 2016. The trigger was their divergent stands on the Sutlej Yamuna Link (SYL) canal, an emotive water-sharing issue between their home states that is rooted in Punjab’s 1966 division to carve out Haryana.
While Haryana’s demand for a share of river waters has been supported by the Supreme Court, Punjab has adamantly opposed it, with the SAD-BJP government even returning the land set aside for SYL to its original owners. It was this decision that led to the split.
“Our personal relationship has not been affected. But there will be no political alliance with the Akalis,” said senior INLD leader Abhay Chautala, the son of former Haryana chief minister O.P. Chautala and grandson of party founder Devi Lal.
“The Akalis are trying to save the water of the SYL canal for their farmers and we are fighting for the same water, which is the right of our farmers. And since there is a direct clash over the issue, we cannot be together,” he added. “For us, the SYL canal is the most important issue,” Chautala said.
The SAD, meanwhile, said they had been forced out of the bond. “We never broke up with the INLD. They decided to move away,” said SAD chief Sukhbir Singh Badal.
New alliances?
For the elections next year, the INLD has tied up with Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party. At the Centre, Chautala said he planned to support a ‘Third Front’, but one without the Congress.
The Akalis, meanwhile, are looking for new partners in Haryana and there is already talk of a possible alliance with their Punjab partner — the BJP.
The support of the Akalis for the INLD had caused much heartburn in the Haryana unit of the BJP on account of their Punjab partnership. But the BJP’s Punjab unit had clarified that the party’s alliances were state-specific.
Sources in the BJP say that the party is confident enough to go solo in the state, but an alliance cannot be ruled out because the “central command may want to retain its close bond with the SAD”.
They added BJP president Amit Shah’s recent trip to Chandigarh, the states’ joint capital, to meet Badal was a “clear move to assuage its electoral partner as well as to look at furthering the alliance in other states”.
Apart from Punjab and Haryana, the SAD contests elections on some seats in Rajasthan.
Last month, senior party leader Jagir Kaur, addressing a gathering in Karnal, announced that the SAD will contest all of Haryana’s 90 assembly seats in 2019.
In December, the party announced it will go solo in all the elections — from civic bodies to Parliament — in the state, and shortlisted 30 assembly seats and three Lok Sabha seats (out of 10) to contest.
Sukhbir told The Print that he was keeping his options open in Haryana. “It is too early to say whom we are tying up with in Haryana. All the cards are still not on the table,” he added.
Will they? Won’t they?
If a BJP-SAD alliance comes through in Haryana, this will be the first foray of the old allies in the state currently led by the BJP
But Chautala said the alliance would struggle to build its campaign in the state on account of the SYL issue.
The BJP, which is unlikely to repeat its 2014 magic in the state, however, could do with a partner, especially in the state’s Jat belt. While the BJP had recorded its best-ever performance in Haryana in the 2014 assembly elections, when it won 33.2 per cent of the total votes polled, Jat voters remained loyal to the INLD and theCongress.
With Captain Khattar on the bridge of the Titanic, the party needs all the help it can get in Haryana.