Chandigarh: A day after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) snapped ties with the Jannayak Janata Party (JJP) and replaced chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar with Nayab Saini, JJP’s Dushyant Chautala, who served as the deputy chief minister in Khattar government alleged that the BJP’s entire political drama was to unseat him.
Holding show of strength at a rally in Hisar, Chautala said the BJP was getting wary in the alliance because JJP was seen as more active in the Khattar government.
“BJP MLAs often confided in me that raj tau aap hi chala rahe (you are the one running the government),” said Chautala whose party had just 10 MLAs against BJP’s 40 in the alliance that was not originally planned during 2019 assembly polls.
Both parties fought the last assembly election against each other and only came together in the post-election scenario after BJP fell short of majority.
While the alliance had a smooth run in the last four and a half years, restlessness was growing among the BJP leaders possibly because Dushyant was hogging more limelight, something he also mentioned in his address.
As the curtains finally closed on the alliance, Dushyant, as expected, owned several achievements of Khattar government as his own.
He said whether 50% reservation of women in local bodies, or 75% reservations for Haryana youth in private jobs, all these welfare schemes became possible in the Khattar government because of his party’s active involvement.
Dushyant said it was because of the JJP that interest of farmers, labourers and Dalits got prominence and were given benefit of government schemes. “I am hopeful that the new government under Nayab Singh Saini will continue welfare schemes started in the previous government because of us,” he added.
Dusyant’s father and JJP’s national president Ajay Chautala, meanwhile, also hinted that seat sharing dispute was cited as an excuse to end the alliance. “We demanded two seats from the BJP but they denied and later snapped the ties with us,” he said while hitting out at the saffron party saying that the latter did not follow alliance dharma. “We supported BJP on all occasions but they did not.”
On the next course of action, both the father-son duo said they would definitely fight the upcoming Lok Sabha elections and they would decide in coming days on the number of seats that they would contest. They said their final goal is to get majority on their own in the assembly polls later this year and for this, the party workers were fully poised.
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JJP came into existence only in 2018, after Ajay had a fall out with his brother Abhay Chautala of the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD), whose founder was popular Jat leader of Haryana Chaudhary Devi Lal.
Saini won floor test
A day after taking the oath as the chief minister, Saini won the floor test in the state assembly due to support of six independent MLAs. The Haryana assembly was convened on the request of Saini who wanted to prove his majority in the floor test.
During the trust vote, five out of the 10 JJP MLAs were present in the assembly. But after the JJP issued whip asking their MLAs to not attend the session, they went out and did not participate in the floor test.
JJP state president Nishan Singh told media that all party MLAs are united even as divide in the party was clearly visible.
During the rally, Dushyant said that JJP was least worried of defection in the party. He mentioned, “In the 70s, the then Congress leader Bhajan Lal took away most of our MLAs but did it finish us? Our real strength is our supporters.”
Meanwhile, Saini said in his assembly address that people of the state have full confidence in the BJP. “There are innumerable works that have been done by our government,” said Saini in the assembly.
On the contrary, Congress MLAs flayed the BJP, saying that change in the government showed that the party was a failure on all accounts.
