New Delhi: Overcoming all odds, including anti-incumbency, exit poll predictions and the three-term jinx, the BJP on Tuesday made an impressive comeback in Haryana to form government in the state for the third time in a row, a first in the state. Apart from improving its vote share to 40 per cent from 36 per cent in 2019, with 48 wins, the BJP has also bagged most seats over the last three Assembly polls. The Congress won 37 seats. Incumbent CM Nayab Singh Saini is likely to retain his post.
Consolidation of non-Jat votes against the party, infighting among top leaders and late candidate selection led to the defeat of the Congress, which the pollsters had predicted will sweep the state.
The Congress’ poll campaign, built around issues like unemployment, farmers’ plight and the Agnipath scheme, failed to click with the majority of the voters. The intense poll campaigns by the senior Congress leaders, including Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, also could not yield the desired result for the Opposition party and it lost the majority of the seats where Mr Gandhi campaigned.
The Congress’s over-dependence on Jat votes and on the Hoodas (former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Hooda and his MP son Deepender Hooda), infighting, were some of the key factors that led to the party’s defeat.
Without naming him but clearly hitting out at Mr Hooda, Congress MP Kumari Selja said the party will now sit and discuss what went wrong including the lack of coordination between the leaders who were supposed to lead from the front. She too was a CM aspirant.
Mr Hooda and former deputy CM Chander Mohan Bishnoi, who defeated BJP’s Speaker in the Assembly Gian Chand Gupta in Panchkula and Olympian wrestler Vinesh Phogat are among the prominent winners for the Congress.
BJP leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah countered the Congress party’s offensive. The saffron party went into the Harayan polls highlighting its MSP on 24 crops in the state, claiming that it was the first state in the country to do so. Among its poll promises, the BJP promised Rs 2,100 per month to women under the Lado Lakshmi Yojna and also announced to give a cooking gas cylinder at Rs 500 under the Har Ghar Grihni Yojna.
The BJP’s consistent attack on the Congress over the Dalit issues also appeared to have found resonance among the voters. Further, the RSS ground push helped the BJP, particularly in the rural areas. The party benefitted from its loyal vote-bank in the Ahirwal region of southern Haryana, which has 11 Assembly seats, and the urban areas like Gurugram, Faridabad and Sohna. Yet, out of 11 sitting ministers of the BJP who contested, nine lost.
Mr Saini won from Ladwa, defeating Congress rival Mewa Singh. The sitting chief minister, who took over about 200 days before the Assembly elections, worked his way to consolidate the non-Jat votes and mitigate the anger built up due to the Agniveer scheme, the farmers’ movement and the wrestlers’ agitation.
Mr Saini also exploited the infighting between the Congress’ CM aspirants — Mr Hooda and Ms Selja. He managed to build up on the fear that Mr Hooda will work only for Jats and non-Jats will get marginalised, like before. The Saini experiment worked well for the BJP, which surmounted the anti-incumbency against the former CM Manohar Lal Khattar, who was removed in the run-up to Lok Sabha campaigning. The party had also replaced 60 candidates to combat the anti-incumbency factor.
Speaking with the media, Mr Saini said, “Ours was a double-engine government. Several schemes announced by the state government for the benefit of the people were received well.”
The INLD, once a dominant force in Haryana, was relegated to just two seats due to the direct contest between the BJP and the Congress. The Chautala clan, both in the INLD and its splinter group the Jannayak Janata Party (JJP), suffered big losses.
Among the heavyweights who lost the elections are former deputy CM and JJP leader Dushyant Chautala and his uncle INLD’s Abhay Chautala. In Uchana Kalan, where the BJP’s Devender Attri defeated Congress’s Brijendra Singh by only 32 votes, Dushyant Chautala was at the fifth spot.
Among others who faced defeat are state Congress president Udaybhan, former BJP state president and minister in the state Om Prakash Dhankar, RJD leader Lalu Yadav’s son-in-law Chiranjeev Rao.
Eight members from former deputy Prime Minister Devi Lal’s clan contested, but only two, Arjun Chautala and Aditya Devi Lal of the INLD, won.
Three Independents, including Savitri Jindal, also won. Ms Jindal, who is the mother of BJP’s Kurukshetra MP Naveen Jindal, is named the richest Indian woman by Forbes India.
The AAP, which was hoping to open an account in the state, drew blank again, like in 2019, prompting its chief Arvind Kejriwal to say, “The biggest lesson from Haryana elections is that one should never be overconfident.”