Importance of Haryana polls

The outcome of assembly elections in Haryana will be significant for at least five reasons. One, this is the first state polls since the general election results were announced in June this year. Its outcome will have a bearing on the political mood ahead of the upcoming assembly polls in Maharashtra and Jharkhand. Two, it will be a test of the BJP’s resilience in holding on to office in states, which it has managed successfully in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh for decades though the party’s rise in Haryana is more recent — since 2014. Three, issues such as the Agnipath scheme for recruitment to security forces and farmer discontent have been at the heart of the poll campaign and the results are likely to impact the Centre’s stance on these going ahead. Four, the BJP’s social engineering of building a coalition of non-dominant OBC communities to neutralise dominant caste-centric political mobilisation is on test in Haryana. Five, this is the first election since the Supreme Court order on sub-categorisation in Dalit quota and how the Dalit vote, close to 20% of the electorate, responds politically will be keenly watched.

Both the BJP and the INDIA bloc have a lot riding on the outcome. The BJP is fighting anti-incumbency of two terms: Though it failed to win a simple majority five years ago, it formed a government by sharing power with the Jannayak Janta Party (JJP), which has since left the alliance. The BJP removed Manohar Lal Khattar, its surprise choice for the chief minister’s office in 2014, ahead of the general election to contain anti-incumbency. It didn’t yield the expected returns — the party’s Lok Sabha tally was reduced by half (from 10 in 2019 to five in 2024) and its vote share fell from 58% to 46.11%. The past five years have been a difficult time for the Khattar-Nayab Singh Saini government with farmers taking to the streets over the farm laws furthering the rural-urban divide, the state’s top wrestlers on the warpath against BJP and Wrestling Federation of India heavyweight, Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, and the youth restive about the Agnipath scheme. These factors hurt the party’s prospects in the general election and have lingered, despite the Centre’s efforts to engage with the aggrieved sections.

In Haryana, it’s a crowded field this time with the Indian National Lok Dal, the JJP, the Bahujan Samaj Party, Aam Aadmi Party, and even Chandrashekhar Azad Ravan’s Azad Samaj Party, working out alliances to complicate the electoral calculations of the BJP and the Congress. The smaller parties and alliances can turn voter-cutters and cause surprises. The BJP has also sought to paint the Congress as a party solely committed to the interests of the numerically and politically powerful Jat community, in a bid to create a non-Jat polarisation in its favour. This is a tactic that helped it gain ground in the past. The visible domination of former CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda and his family in the Haryana Congress and the restiveness among some party leaders over this have helped the BJP to amplify its message. The Congress, riding high on the 99 seats it won in the general election, has tried to dispel this impression and consolidate its core vote, which includes Dalits, Muslims and, of course, the Jats, around a rights and governance agenda.

For the BJP and Congress, a win in Haryana will embellish their narratives regarding the 2024 general election outcome — if it was an aberration or a trend — and build momentum going ahead.

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