Gurugram: Still uncertain about its future in the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in Haryana just ahead of the general election, the Jannayak Janata Party (JJP) decided to finally pop the question: will its marriage of convenience with the BJP continue this election or will they go their separate ways?
According to Haryana JJP president Nishan Singh, party supremo Ajay Singh Chautala has set up a six-member coordination committee to find out just that. The committee will comprise Deputy Chief Minister Dushyant Singh Chautala, former chairman of the Haryana Public Service Commission K.C. Bangar, JJP national general secretary Brij Sharma, Haryana Minister of State for Labour and Employment Anoop Dhanak, Narnaul Municipal Corporation chairperson Kamlesh Saini and JJP leader Ram Niwas Yadav.
The decision to set up such a panel was taken at a party convention held in Gharaunda, Karnal, Sunday.
“The panel has been told to coordinate with the NDA leadership in the next seven days on the issue of alliance for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls and submit a report. The party would prefer to contest the elections as a member of the NDA. However, in case this doesn’t happen, the JJP is prepared to go alone and contest on all ten seats,” Singh told ThePrint.
JJP’s decision to set up a panel comes a day after Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar indicated yet again that the BJP could consider contesting all 10 of Haryana’s Lok Sabha seats on its own, reiterating what party leaders have stated many times before.
Significantly, the BJP has even hinted on occasion that the alliance with JJP “was solely to run the government”.
“An atmosphere favorable for a BJP government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the third time in a row has already emerged. The NDA will win 400 seats in the country while people of Haryana will help the Lotus (poll symbol of the BJP) bloom on all 10 seats in the state,” Khattar said after he inaugurated the party’s election offices in all 10 parliamentary constituencies Saturday.
हरियाणा में 10 में से 10, देश में 400 पार!
फिर एक बार, भाजपा सरकार!आज गुरुग्राम में भाजपा के उत्साहित और समर्पित कार्यकर्ताओं के साथ लोकसभा चुनाव के दृष्टिगत विधानसभा स्तर के चुनाव कार्यालय का उद्घाटन किया।
प्रधानमंत्री श्री @narendramodi जी के नेतृत्व में देश व प्रदेश की… pic.twitter.com/P82iWXbghE
— Manohar Lal (मोदी का परिवार) (@mlkhattar) March 2, 2024
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Alliance troubles
Signs of trouble between the alliance partners have been seen for some time now, with the two parties sparring over seats of common interest.
Addressing a public meeting in Sirsa — Dushyant Chautala’s home turf — last June, Union Home Minister Amit Shah appealed to the public to help BJP win in all 10 of Haryana’s LOk Sabha seats. This sparked speculation that the BJP could be considering dumping the JJP, with whom it formed a post-poll alliance after the 2019 assembly elections.
Currently, the BJP has 41 seats in Haryana’s 90-member assembly against JJP’s 10. Their main rival the Congress, meanwhile, has 30 seats.
According to a senior JJP leader, although the party leadership favours continuing its alliance with the NDA because of the public mood in favour of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the BJP has not broached the subject yet.
But the BJP’s outreach to Jayant Chaudhary-led Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) last month has given it the hope that it would do the same here, this leader said. Like the JJP, the RLD — a regional party in Uttar Pradesh — counts Jats as its core voter base.
“We were hopeful that the manner in which the BJP has reached out to Jayant Chaudhary-led Rashtriya Lok Dal and some other smaller parties in Uttar Pradesh, the party will also accommodate our party. We were thinking that the BJP would offer us one or two seats from among Hisar and Bhiwani — the seats Dushyant Chautala and his father Ajay Singh Chautala have represented in the past. However, no one has approached us so far and now, we need to make things clear with our alliance partner,” the JJP leader said.
Meanwhile, the JJP announced Sunday that it would ask the central government to confer the Bharat Ratna on former deputy prime minister Devi Lal — JJP supremo Ajay Chautala’s grandfather — and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) founder Kanshi Ram.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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