Sravasti Dasgupta 
New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has defied 10 years of anti-incumbency, exit poll predictions and seemingly course-corrected from its losses in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections as it is poised to form a third consecutive government in Haryana.
Of the total 90 seats in the state, the BJP comfortably crossed the half-way mark and won 48 seats, recording its best performance in the state. The Congress too secured its best result in Haryana in a decade, winning 37 seats, while the Indian Nationalist Lok Dal (INLD) won two and the independents won three seats.
Despite the 9-seat margin between the Congress and the BJP, in terms of vote share, the gap between the two is merely 0.85%. Both the parties saw an increase in their vote shares in comparison to the 2019 assembly elections. While the BJP’s vote share increased from 36.49% in 2019 to 39.94% this time, the Congress recorded a higher improvement in its vote share by getting 39.09% in 2024 against 28.08% in 2019.
Buoyed by its performance in the state in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, where it held the BJP to five of the total 10 seats in the state, against the saffron party’s clean sweep in 2019, the Congress was pipped to be the favourite in the election. This, as the BJP was battling 10 years of anti-incumbency, farmers’ discontent, including ongoing protest at the state’s borders demanding a legal guarantee for MSP among other demands, disenchantment against the Agniveer scheme, rising inflation and unemployment.
So how did the BJP achieve this turnaround?
The answer, according to Rahul Verma, fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, lies in a combination of factors.
“Counter polarisation, where the Congress played the Jat card which produced a counter polarisation among non-Jats. Second, with the INLD and the JJP [Jannayak Janata Party] getting squeezed further, this led to favourable vote-seat conversion for the BJP. Third, the BJP recognised that it was on a weaker wicket and tried to overturn it,” he said
Course correction by the BJP
Ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, the BJP took course-corrective measures which seems to have paid heavy dividends in this election. The first and most decisive move in this direction was to remove now Union minister Manohar Lal Khattar, who had led the Haryana government for two terms, earlier this year. The Khattar government faced criticism after its crackdown on the farmers’ Delhi Chalo march in February and poor governance. The BJP replaced Khattar, a Punjabi, with Nayab Singh Saini – former Kurukshetra MP and Other Backward Castes (OBC) leader – who was later also made the party’s chief ministerial face.
Saini, who ran a minority government in the state and served for only 56 days after the Lok Sabha elections, proclaimed that he had taken “126 historic decisions” in this short while. He also announced a slew of populist measures in the weeks before the assembly elections including procuring all crops at MSP, compensating farmers for less rains, increasing reservations for OBCs in line with that of the centre’s to 27% and the annual income limit for OBC creamy layer from Rs 6 lakh to Rs 8 lakh, formalising over 1 lakh contractual jobs and 10% reservation for Agniveers in government jobs among others. Many of these measures announced by Saini were subsequently included in the BJP’s poll manifesto.
Saini’s elevation as CM face and non-Jat consolidation
Subsequently, the move to make Saini the chief ministerial face was also an effort to blunt the Congress’ Jat-dominant campaign run by former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, as the BJP sought to consolidate other non-Jat communities in the state.
Jats constitute 27% of the population in Haryana and historically the state has been led by chief ministers from the community. Both in 2014, and 2019, the BJP managed to consolidate a majority of 35 communities of the state in its favour and pitted them against the dominant Jats. The BJP’s slogan “35 banaam 1 (35 against 1)” in the last two assembly polls in the state captured the imagination of a large chunk of non-Jat caste groups. In this election, the Congress, under Hooda, pitched a campaign of unity and said that 36 biradris are with the party. But with Saini being made the chief minister as well the chief ministerial face for this election, the BJP’s aim was two pronged – blunt the Khattar government’s anti-incumbency and mobilise the non-Jat voters.
In Ladwa, for instance, from where Saini won the election on Tuesday, The Wire found that the strategy had not only appealed to those BJP voters who were disenchanted with the Khattar government, but also effectively mobilised the non-Jat and broader social coalition in its favour.
“Khattar did not do any work in the last ten years and that is why he had to be removed. In the last 56 days alone Saini has done so much work,” said Ram Singh Saini in Ladwa’s Gudha village, who is also a member of the Saini community.
The BJP built its campaign not only around an OBC chief ministerial candidate in contrast to the Congress’ undeclared but assumed Jat candidate, Hooda, but also promised to make Ladwa – a constituency in southern Haryana – a “CM City”. This was in consonance with its larger plank of state-wide development, offering alternative to the norm where previous chief ministers, mainly belonging to the Rohtak, Sonipat belt, concentrated development to those areas.
While the Congress campaigned on broader national issues, like unemployment and inflation, as it has in the Lok Sabha elections, the BJP sought to highlight jobs with “kharchi-parchi” (bribe) under the Congress rule and portrayed the party as one of “baap-beta” in a swipe against Hooda and his son, Rohtak MP, Deepender Hooda. Deepender was also believed to be a contender for the chief minister’s job if the party won.
“We have given jobs without ‘kharchi-parchi’, children are going to school, earlier LPG cylinders would take 20 days just to book, we have changed everything. Earlier we have seen chief ministers only from Rohtak, Sonipat but this time we will have a chief minister from Ladwa. The Lok Sabha election losses won’t affect the party as people vote differently in assembly elections,” said Desh Raj Sharma, the BJP’s Pipli office-in-charge in Ladwa.
The Selja Factor and infighting
After the Jats which account for about 27% of the state population, the Dalits community is the second largest at about 21%.
While the Congress reiterated its pitch of a caste census and claimed that it has the support of all 36 biradris, its actions on the ground belied these claims. Inner party factionalism, particularly the divide between Hooda and Sirsa MP Kumari Selja, a prominent Dalit face in the state, came to the fore after the distribution of tickets. Selja who had publicly made her hopes of being the chief minister clear, disappeared from the campaign trail for over a week, only to emerge hand in hand with Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi and Hooda at a campaign stage in the last leg of the campaign.
The BJP, stung by the Congress’ campaign in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections – where it alleged that if the saffron party won 400 seats it would change the Constitution and end reservations – swung into action, calling the party “anti-Dalit” for the treatment meted out to Selja.
In its outreach to voters, the party also reversed the Congress’ Lok Sabha poll narrative of reservations being under threat and used Rahul Gandhi’s comments in the US to claim that it is the Congress that will end reservations if it is voted to power.
“The negative campaign run by the Congress during the Lok Sabha elections that BJP would change the Constitution affected us and cost us 5 seats in the Lok Sabha elections,” said Amit Garg, Yamunanagar district vice president of the BJP.
“This time we have gone to the people and said that as long as Modi is there no one will change the constitution.”
In the 17 reserved SC seats in the state, both the Congress and the BJP won almost equal seats at nine and eight each.
Spoil from rebels-turned-independents
The distribution of tickets, over which Hooda is believed to have held sway in 70 of the 90 seats, also saw Congress rebels contesting as independents, which cut into the party’s votes and helped the BJP’s leads.
While the Congress expelled 21 rebels ahead of the elections, many of them cut into the Congress’ votes aiding the BJP’s victory.
For instance, Chitra Sarwara, who was denied a ticket in Ambala Cantt, lost to the BJP’s former minister Anil Vij by a margin of around 7,000 votes. The Congress candidate Parvinder Pal Pari came third and won 14,469 votes while Sarwara won 52,581 votes.
In Tigaon, Congress rebel Lalit Kumar came second to BJP’s Rajesh Nagar, while the Congress candidate Rohit Nagar came third.
Rajesh Joon, an independent who won the Bahadurgarh seat by a margin of over 40,000 votes, is also a Congress rebel who was denied a ticket.
In Ballabgarh, former Congress leader, Sharda Rathore who contested as an independent came second to the BJP’s Mool Chand Sharma, while the Congress’ candidate Parag Sharma came fourth.
Rohita Rewari, former MLA and Congress rebel, who contested as an independent from Panipat City, polled over 15,000 votes on the seat won by the BJP.
In Nilokheri, Congress rebel Raj Kumar won over 5,000 votes in the seat won by the BJP where the winning margin was around 18,000 votes.
INLD, JJP Losses, Congress complacency
The BJP also gained from the losses garnered by the two regional Jat-dominated parties – Abhay Singh Chautala’s INLD and its offshoot, former deputy chief minister Dushyant Chautala’s Jannayak Janata Party (JJP).
The two tied up with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Azad Samaj Party (ASP) respectively to woo the Dalit vote in the state. While the INLD won two seats, the JJP, BSP and ASP won none. In 2019, the BJP formed the government, with the help of ten seats won by the JJP.
These parties being pushed further to the margins also helped the BJP’s vote to seat share conversion, as pointed out by Verma.
“BJP had not hoped for a victory in this election but I think Congress got overhyped as it did in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh in 2023,” said Verma.
“Perhaps it got complacent. And then that complacency might have led to the factional feud between Hooda and Selja which had also played out in Chhattisgarh between former chief minister Bhupesh Baghel and (his then deputy) T.S. Singh Deo. So the results are Congress’s mistakes plus the BJP recognising [that] it’s on a weaker wicket and putting up a fight.”