BJP May Have Won in Haryana But the State's Issues Persist

Political logic is not subservient to situational logic. Experts, both genuine and fake, dropped the political reality of Haryana like hot coal, as soon as the result showed the Bharatiya Janata Party victorious. They started hawking new stuff, telling us that electoral outcomes are dictated by micro-management, not the larger ground reality. They changed both the context and substance of political battle, as if nut-and-bolt tightening can run the car without the engine.

The actual reasons for the outcome in Haryana may not be purely political but let us not delve into those mysteries at this stage.

Haryana was not a normal tough election where tact and management could have tilted the scale. This election was about people’s revolt against the government; a volcano that erupted burning down the façade hiding the ugliness of an oppressive government. A deadly cocktail of voter fatigue and public anger almost knocked the BJP out of the race months before the campaign started. The BJP also discovered the alarming truth and not only removed chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar from office but also from the public glare.

At that stage, every section of society explicitly demonstrated their fury and vowed to remove the government. This was not only limited to the dominant community of Jats but every section of society, including OBCs and Dalits – a fact vividly manifested in the parliamentary election. Farmers were livid, youth detested the BJP because of the Agniveer scheme and unemployment, and women were enraged by rising prices and the wrestlers’ protest. Groups of teachers, sarpanches, and those working at anganwadis nursed a grudge because of the government’s violent reprisal to protests.

Pre-poll conversations with ordinary people unambiguously recorded widespread displeasure; the anti-BJP sentiment was overwhelming while the party’s supporters had vanished.

Also read: Congress’s Hooda Blunder Has Paved the Way for BJP’s Historic Third Mandate in Haryana

Reporters, political observers, pollsters saw the demonstrative anger on the street. Words and data painted a grim picture for the incumbent government. Finally, all exit polls – without any exception – declared a comfortable Congress victory. Most of these pollsters have been accused of a pre-BJP bias in the past. As the Congress surged in early trends during the counting, everybody sang out – that was predictable! Suddenly the dramatic turnaround and the logic too underwent an abrupt metamorphosis. A completely spurious reason of Congress infighting was presented to justify the outcome. As if that reason didn’t exist when assessments showed a Congress landslide.

Kumari Selja was cribbing and Bhupinder Singh Hooda was the domineering force throughout electioneering. Infighting and bad selection of candidates are integral to Congress politics. But the Congress, torn between Siddaramaiah and D.K. Shivakumar, won Karnataka. Anti-incumbency was far more intense in Haryana. Most observers felt people themselves were fighting against the BJP and the Congress was just a beneficiary. When passions run high, voters don’t look for an ideal candidate. Majority of voters didn’t know the names of AAP candidates when Arvind Kejriwal swept the elections in Delhi. In Haryana, people were so angry that they ruthlessly punished Dushyant Chautala’s JJP for supporting the BJP after 2019 election. The JJP has been reduced to zero. Ironically, the same voters didn’t punish the BJP.

To argue that the people feared Jat dominance and hence returned to BJP is a pathetic understanding of people’s emotions. A voter who is shaken by the government’s handling of farmers’ movement, unemployment and prices will not vote for BJP because Selja did not get proper respect. If there was a non-Jat consolidation, why was that not reflected at the prime minister’s rallies? Narendra Modi was compelled to spend time in Maharashtra and Jharkhand when the campaign in Haryana was peaking.

Which BJP candidate drew massive crowds of OBCs and Dalits?

Why were meetings addressed by Rahul Gandhi and Hooda successful everywhere? The contention that some candidates were bad doesn’t work in elections where the storm for change is raging. When a good candidate like Kanhaiya Kumar is defeated by rivals like Giriraj Singh and Manoj Tiwari, the so-called experts invent suitable logic to rationalise the outcome. The BJP not only faced a strong anti-incumbency, it was grappling with Modi’s falling popularity, leadership crisis in state, internal frictions and absence of a powerful narrative. In fact, it had no narrative at all.

But the result appears to have changed it all. There is now an attempt to lionise Modi and ridicule Rahul Gandhi. But the fact, not open to dispute, is that people were not willing to pay heed to what Modi had to say. His rallies had flopped while Rahul drew huge crowds. The primary causes of people’s anger were linked to Modi’s policies and style of governance, not the state’s failures. The three most evident causes were mishandling of the farmers’ movement and wrestlers’ protest, introduction of Agniveer scheme and the choice of Manohar Lal Khattar as the chief minister. These were Modi’s decisions. All these questions are alive.

Also read: As BJP Regains Reputation as Election-Managing Machine, Congress Could Learn a Lesson on Sharing Power

That the BJP had to hide Khattar from public cannot be seen in isolation. This is a malaise that Modi and Amit Shah introduced into the BJP system and it requires treatment because it is destroying the leadership base of the party. There is a sinister design behind the practice of thrusting weak chief ministers on the states on the basis of their loyalty and timidity, not on the strength of popularity and competence. Khattar, never known to be a leader of Haryana, was a classic product of this perverse syndrome. He was retained despite rejection by the voters in 2019, showcasing Modi and Shah’s reluctance to pay heed to the voices from the ground. The same syndrome produced Mohan Yadav in Madhya Pradesh, Bhajanlal Sharma in Rajasthan and Vishnu Deo Sai in Chhattisgarh. The bizarre choices, that shocked everybody including the BJP leaders, show that Modi-Shah want to run the states through remote-control, without caring for people’s sentiments. They wielded such power and control that even veterans chose to suppress their emotions, fearing reprisal.

Modi hasn’t done this for the first time. He chose Bhupendra Patel, a first time MLA, to lead the important state of Gujarat. In Tripura, he picked Biplab Deb for the chief minister’s job. In Uttarakhand, this tendency of playing with the chief minister’s chair reached a ridiculous height with three faces getting reshuffled within a short period of time. The final choice, Pushkar Dhami, was an absolute greenhorn. The intention was clear – maximise control and rule through proxies.

Political wisdom would never allow anybody to hoist an unknown Bhajanlal Sharma to run an important state like Rajasthan by pushing aside the veteran and extremely popular Vasundhara Raje Scindia. But Modi-Shah run the party on personal whims and fancies. For them, it was more important to corner a defiant Raje and strengthen their hegemony than to strengthen the party in Rajasthan. They had demonstrated this tendency at every level from the very beginning. The appointment of Smriti Irani as the education minister in 2014 was manifestation of the same approach. Again, the decision to allocate top portfolios like defence and finance to Nirmala Sitharaman showed Modi cared little for experience and expertise. But they ran the party with brute force, ensuring not even whispers against their senseless decisions.

Haryana rose against this authoritarian madness. When Khattar became a liability because of his arrogance and incompetence, Modi played another Gujarat-like trick by replacing him with Nayab Saini. He had managed Gujarat by removing Vijay Rupani just before election. But that was a different time; Modi’s action and inaction triggered hysterical responses within and outside the BJP, stamping out flickers of dissent at all levels. The parliamentary election in 2024 changed that situation, ending the mindless support he enjoyed across the country. Modi perhaps knew his depleting political stock may create such a crisis for his leadership and hence made a desperate attempt to win Haryana. The victory, however, will provide only temporary succour because his popularity will now be tested in Maharashtra and Jharkhand. Those who have presumed that his pre-2024 swagger is restored are only misleading themselves and the nation.

Sanjay K. Jha is a political commentator.