Rewari, Jind (Haryana): As the paddy harvest season gears up in north India, loaded tractors are lining up at mandis in Haryana while fumes from the burnt parali or residue have started reaching Delhi just like the political heat from the poll bound state.
If majority of media reports are to be believed, Haryana is witnessing a Congress tsunami, and is likely to win a spectacular mandate, winning more than three-fourth of the seats in the assembly elections.
How real are the chances of this happening in a state where just few months back, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) got 46.11% votes and won half of the seats in this Lok Sabha elections?
Let’s have a look at three major factors that will determine whether this can happen or not.
Anti-incumbency, Jat consolidation, Dalit shift and the 36 Biradari emphasis
“Das saal ho gaye, pichli baar hi hatane ka man tha janta ka par ye log jod-tod se sarkar bana liye, ab to boriyat ho gayi BJP se (It has been 10 years, even last time people wanted to change them but they formed the government by tricks, now we are bored of the BJP),” says 58-year-old Angrez Singh Kamboj, amidst a gathering of card players in Indri assembly constituency of Karnal district.
What Kamboj is referring to is the mandate of the last assembly election, when the BJP failed to get a clear majority and managed to win only 40 seats yet formed the government with the support of Dushyant Chautala-led Jannayak Janata Party (JJP).
The JJP had fought the 2019 assembly polls on a pure anti-BJP plank, succeeding in cutting away Jat votes from the Congress and winning ten seats. However, it later supported the same BJP in return for deputy chief minister’s post and few ministerial berths, and went on to even criticise the farmers’ movement against three farm laws, a decision that the farmers of Haryana consider unpardonable.
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“Ibke ber ghuske dikhawe gaam main Dushyant, jo gaadari ki uski saja to milegi (Let Dushyant dare enter the villages this time, he has to face the punishment for the treachery he did),” says Dharam Singh at a tea shop in Uchana Kalan assembly, from where Dushyant is the sitting MLA and JJP candidate.
Most of the experts on Haryana politics are unanimous that the JJP is not going to win a single seat this time, including that of Dushyant, and the reason is the sense of betrayal by him among farmers who voted him last time.
Similarly, Abhay Chautala’s Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) is also not doing well, and is expected to win one to three seats only this time. This means that over 25% population of Haryana comprising of Jats is consolidated in favour of the Congress party, in addition to Jatt Sikhs and other farming communities.
Does anti-incumbency and Jat consolidation ensure that the Congress is winning? Certainly not. That’s why the Congress leadership made sure that Kumari Selja, the biggest SC leader of Congress from the numerically dominant Chamar caste, shares stage with Bhupinder Hooda.
Both Bhupinder Hooda and his son Deepender Singh Hooda, considered to be the most popular chief ministerial faces of the state, got a lion’s share in ticket allotment which irked rivals Kumari Selja and All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary Randeep Surjewala. While Surjewala remained busy in his son Aditya Surjewala’s campaign, who is contesting from his father’s seat Kaithal, Selja refused to campaign till very recently.
Notably, Selja did not do a single rally till the arrival of Rahul Gandhi in the Haryana campaign. She kept making public statements about her ambitions of becoming a chief minister. That gave the BJP a ready made material. The saffron party kept attacking Hooda for being a casteist, not allowing a Dalit leader any space in the party.
It was only after Gandhi’s first rally in Selja-loyalist MLA Shamsher Gogi’s constituency, Asandh, that she began her regular campaign. The symbolic joining of hands on the stage by Selja and Bhupinder Hooda at the behest of Gandhi did assail the fears about disunity in the Congress to a great extent. Another significant difference this time in speeches of Bhupinder Hooda and other Congress leaders is the regular invoking of 36 biradari or all castes, to allay the fears of anti-Jat consolidation.
Issues and concerns of voters in Haryana
The most talked-about narrative in this election is the ‘kisan-jawan-samvidhan‘ (farmers-army-constitution) narrative, encompassing the farmers’ unrest over the BJP’s handling of the farmers’ movement, youth anger against the Agniveer scheme, and fears among Dalits about ending reservation and altering the constitution.
However, another significant pan-state issue is that of the family ID, launched as parivar pehchan patra scheme in 2020 to ease distribution of services and the process of getting it made caused exceptional difficulties to common people. The registration process was so inefficient that it had huge typos, category related anomalies and then common people were forced to run from pillar to post to get them corrected. The sentiment against the pain endured in that process is so huge that the Congress has announced to scrap it if it comes to power.
Besides these, inflation, joblessness and lack of infrastructure are also major issues. And Haryana can boast of a large network of quality highways but internal roads are broken across the state, be it cities like Gurgaon or Faridabad. Water logging in towns and cities is rampant. According to a survey by Hyderabad-based agency People’s Pulse, more than one-third of sitting MLAs had a negative approval rating from their voters for failing to do development work in their constituencies.
Government employees in the state, from permanent to contractual workers, are dissatisfied with the BJP’s decade-long rule and are demanding a change.
Since the last two years, the sarpanchs or elected village heads of the state are on a war-path against the government for changing rules and bringing in e-tendering process that allegedly curtails the powers of panchayat representatives. In March 2023, a permanent protest call was given by sarpanchs on Chandigarh-Panchkula border, which was also lathicharged by police on government orders.
Clearly, these issues are creating significant problems for the incumbent government, and if the unrest is genuine, the BJP government’s chances of a third term seem increasingly unlikely.
Social engineering, dominant OBC consolidation and regional equations
Does this mean that the Congress party is going to cross 60 seats in the state this time? The answer to this question is certainly no at this stage. The most significant question then is what is preventing the grand old party from making a sweep and keeping the BJP in contest albeit weaker this time, in Haryana?
One major factor is that despite erosions, the caste arithmetic of the BJP is still holding on to keep it in the contest. According to the latest round of pre-poll survey by People’s Pulse, four numerically biggest OBC communities of Haryana — Sainis, Ror/Marathas, Kashyaps and Yadavs — are still decisively in favour of the BJP. While the elevation of Nayab Singh Saini as the chief minister is one reason behind it, the other definitely is anti-Jat sentiment among other dominant OBCs. It is for this reason that almost all the senior BJP leaders, including home minister Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, keep invoking the Jat versus OBC narrative in their speeches.
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“Jat CM nahin chahiye, agar Hooda CM bana to sara vikas Jaaton ka aur Rohtak belt ka hoga aur hamara Ahirwal pahle ki tarah upekshit rah jayega (We don’t want a Jat CM, if Hooda becomes the CM, then all development will happen for Jats and Rohtak region and our Ahirwal will remain neglected like the past),” says 35-year-old Prashant Yadav in Ateli market of Rewari district, as other respondents nod in agreement.
What Yadav said resonated with the majority of Yadav respondents in Ahirwal, a region that encompasses Rewari, Mahendragarh, and Gurgaon districts, named after the Ahirs or Yadavs who are the dominant population here.
Moreover, the Valmikis among SCs also favour the BJP over the Congress, even this time. And the support for the BJP among general castes, be it Baniyas, Brahmins and Rajputs, along with Punjabis, is also considerably more than the Congress. In the GT Road belt districts of Panipat and Karnal, the situation of the BJP is not bad due to the high number of Ror/Maratha, Punjabi and general caste voters and significant number of urban seats.
In the Faridabad region, Gurjars are more in favour of the BJP than the Congress. To balance it, however, the Congress party has made significant inroads in Hisar, Rohtak and Ambala regions where Jats, Sikhs and Dalits are quite influential, and the Mewat region where Muslims are overwhelmingly voting for it. And while smaller parties like the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), JJP and INLD seem ineffective, a large number of rebel candidates are spoiling equations for both the major parties, turning it into a seat by seat elections in a number of regions.
Although Congress seems to have an edge over BJP in Haryana, the number of seats and scale of victory are still uncertain. The outcome may ultimately depend on floating voters, youth, and women, who will cast the decisive votes in this Haryana assembly election.
Rajan Pandey is a freelance journalist. He is associated with the survey agency People’s Pulse.
