New Delhi: In the kingmaker’s position during the 2019 Haryana assembly election, the Dushyant Chautala-led Jannayak Janta Party (JJP) saw a sharp turn in its fate after four party MLAs resigned in quick succession as soon as the date for this year’s assembly election was announced on August 16.
As three more MLAs had already distanced themselves from the party after the fall of the BJP-JJP alliance government in March, this means that seven out of the party’s total of ten MLAs are no longer with it now.
Chautala, his mother Naina Chautala and Amarjeet Dhanda are the only MLAs left in the party as it gears up for the upcoming polls.
The latest turmoil began with the resignation of Anoop Dhanak, an MLA from Uklana in Hisar district, which surprised many as he was among Chautala’s most trusted aides.
After this, the party received resignation letters from MLAs Ishwar Singh (who represents Guhla in Kaithal district), Ram Karan Kala (Shahabad in Kurukshetra district) and Devender Babli (Tohana in Fatehabad district).
While none of the resigned MLAs officially joined any other party, sources said that Singh, Kala and Babli were already warming up to the Congress, while Dhanak may join the BJP camp.
Reacting to the development, JJP leader Randhir Singh told the media that the party was not perturbed by these resignations and that it would come back strongly after the elections.
Despite the party’s claims, it has been losing stream ever since it fell out of the BJP-JJP government, which was successfully run for four and half years before the BJP cut ties with its smaller partner.
It was followed by the party’s worst ever performance in the recent Lok Sabha polls, where its vote share fell below 1% (0.87%), not to mention the fact that all its candidates lost their security deposits.
It was quite a fall for the party, which was launched only in 2018 with much fanfare following a family feud in Om Prakash Chautala’s once-dominant Indian National Lok Dal (INLD), which ruled Haryana multiple times in the past.
The sympathy vote from once-loyal INLD supporters and its anti-BJP stand were the major reasons behind the JJP getting a decent 15% vote share and winning as many as ten seats during the 2019 assembly elections, recalls political analyst from Kurukshetra M.S. Jaglan.
Jaglan, however, told The Wire that the first major mistake the JJP made was to enter into a post-poll alliance with the BJP and forming an alliance government when its mandate was anti-BJP.
He added that the JJP had a chance to resurrect itself during the peak of the farmers’ protests in 2020 when several party supporters were asking it to exit from the alliance government, but it did not do so, earning the ire of its core peasant support base.
Jaglan said that this was clear during the Lok Sabha polls, when the party’s candidates were not allowed to campaign in villages. In the end, the vote share of the party drastically fell below 1%.
He added that the resignation of party MLAs ahead of fresh state polls was not surprising as they knew the party had lost its ground-level support and were now looking for opportunities in other parties to secure their political career, leaving the party in tatters.
Advantage Congress?
It is a well-known fact that JJP’s rise was a major reason factor that restricted the Congress from winning the 2019 assembly polls. With a 28% vote share, the Congress’s tally at 31 was not far behind the BJP’s 40.
But with the JJP getting ten MLAs, the BJP comfortably formed a government for the second time by sharing power with Chautala, who was made deputy CM and two of the JJP’s MLAs getting ministerial berths.
The situation, as per poll observers, is different now.
With the Congress’s resurgence after its better-than-expected Lok Sabha performance and the subsequent fall in the JJP’s political graph, the chances of a division of the anti-incumbency vote against the BJP stand reduced.
“If the JJP fails to rebound, it may help the Congress consolidate anti-incumbency votes against the ruling BJP and give a formidable challenge to the saffron party’s poll prospects,” Vijay Chauhan, assistant professor in the political science department at the Maharana Pratap National College, Mullana, said.
Chauhan said that a major problem for the JJP is that it drastically lost the support of its core base consisting of Jats and the peasant class. When they voted for the party in 2019, they thought Chautala could emerge as the next big farmers’ leader. But the pact with the BJP did not go well for the party.
“There are now chances that the support base of the JJP may consolidate behind the Congress. This was seen during the Lok Sabha polls as well, when there was a massive consolidation of Jats and farmers behind the party, which made them win as many as five parliamentary seats” and made its fight with the BJP neck and neck, he added.
