With the Lok Sabha elections hinting at a change in the air, the political temperature in Haryana is heating up ahead of the Assembly polls. All the signs are there: party hopping, padyatras, welfare schemes / sops being announced by the ruling party, its central leadership making key appointments to “balance” caste equations, pre-poll alliance talks, and war of words between the Opposition and the ruling BJP.
Having gone from all 10 Lok Sabha seats to five In the recent elections, the BJP is working hard to plug the holes. Since June 6, when the Model Code of Conduct for the Lok Sabha polls was lifted, Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini has been announcing schemes almost on a daily basis. The BJP has also gone ahead and announced Saini, an OBC leader, as its CM face.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah made the announcement at the party’s state executive meeting in Panchkula attended by about 4,500 BJP workers. Another such meeting is coming up at Rewari on July 17.
If Saini’s appointment, replacing Manohar Lal Khattar as CM ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, there was an effort at caste balancing, others have followed. On July 9, the BJP named Mohan Lal Badoli, a Brahmin, as its state president, relieving Saini of the responsibility. Khattar, a Punjabi, has moved into the Narendra Modi-led Union Cabinet.
The BJP has also begun preparations for the Rajya Sabha seat vacated by Deepender Hooda, who is the new Rohtak MP. BJP sources said that for the Rajya Sabha election, likely in late July or early August, the party may field Banto Kataria, who lost in the Lok Sabha polls from the Ambala reserved constituency.
Earlier, in April, the BJP sent Subhash Barala, a Jat, into the Rajya Sabha.
The Congress has begun setting its poll prep in order too. On July 11, PCC president Udai Bhan and Congress Legislature Party leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda released the Congress poll campaign plan. They were accompanied by senior Birender Singh, who recently returned to the Congress after a decade in the BJP, and newly elected MPs and several MLAs.
The Congress said it would be holding a rath yatra and padyatras across all 90 constituencies of Haryana. “We are aiming to cover at least two constituencies every day,” Bhan said.
Hooda’s bete noire Kumari Selja, newly elected from Sirsa, has announced a separate padyatra across Haryana’s urban constituencies in the coming weeks. She said she chose these seats as the BJP was ahead of the Congress in them in the Lok Sabha polls.
Another of Hooda’s arch rivals, Kiran Choudhry, is out of the party, joining the list of pre-poll party hoppers. The Tosham MLA, who was also one of the Congress’s four working presidents in Haryana, joined the BJP along with her daughter Shruti Choudhry, the former MP of Bhiwani-Mahendragarh.
While not given much of a chance, the INLD is hoping for a fresh lease of life after tying up with the BSP and announcing Abhay Chautala as the alliance’s CM candidate. Abhay has been touring across Haryana for the past several weeks, in an attempt to boost his party. Currently, he is the lone INLD MLA in the Haryana Assembly, while the BSP has none.
The situation of the other Chautala wing of the family is only slightly better. Having split from the BJP, Jannayak Janata Party (JJP) leader and former deputy CM Dushyant Chautala and his father and party chief Ajay Chautala have been claiming that the alliance with the BJP had cost them dearly. Since the party separated from the BJP, it has lost several of its MLAs and did not win a single Lok Sabha seat. The JJP has since dissolved all its district units and is now holding regular district-wise meetings to rebuild its organization before the Assembly polls.
However, even as the JJP makes peace moves towards the Congress, and is getting little love from it, others do not rule out a pre- or post-poll alliance with the BJP again.
In a state with several alternatives to the Congress and BJP, there has been little space for the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) to grow. And its chances seem dim, with the Congress state unit having made it clear that an alliance struck for the Lok Sabha polls as part of the INDIA bloc with the AAP was unlikely for the Assembly elections. As part of the deal with the Congress, the AAP had contested one seat, and lost.
The BJP had returned to power for the second time in 2019, after forming an alliance with the JJP, and is aiming for a hattrick in the Assembly polls due in October.