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Journalism of Courage
In the 90-member Haryana Assembly, where the BJP returned to power for a third consecutive term with an absolute majority, a total of 49 seats have flipped from one party to another since the 2019 polls.
Among these 49 flipped seats, the BJP and Congress each won 22 seats that they had lost in 2019. The remaining five seats include two that flipped to the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) and three to Independents this time.
Notably, the Congress clinched 10 of its 22 flipped seats from regional players and Independents who had won in 2019. The party wrested the remaining 12 seats from the ruling BJP, which itself got 14 seats from the Congress.
Of the 40 seats the BJP had won in 2019, the party retained 26 or 65%. In contrast, the Congress retained just 15 of the 31 seats it had won in 2019, or just or 48%.
The Jannayak Janta Party (JJP), which had won 10 seats in the 2019 Assembly elections and entered into a post-poll alliance with the BJP to form the government, failed to retain any of its seats. The Congress won six of the JJP’s seats. including Julana, where Olympian wrestler Vinesh Phogat made her electoral debut. The BJP flipped the remaining four seats won by the JJP in 2019.
The JJP had contested this time in an alliance with the Chandrashekhar Azad-led Aazad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram).
The INLD, which won two seats this time, lost the one seat it had won in 2019 – Ellenabad, a prestige seat for the party that was contested by sitting MLA Abhay Chautala, son of former Chief Minister O P Chautala. The Congress won Ellenabad this time by 15,000 votes. The INLD contested these polls in an alliance with the Mayawati-led BSP in a failed attempt to develop a Jat-Dalit combination. The BSP was unable to win any seat and Mayawati hinted that the Jat community’s “anti-Dalit” bias was responsible for this.
The Congress won one seat – Sirsa – that had been secured in 2019 by the Gopal Kanda-led Haryana Lokhit Party (HLP), which was backed by the BJP this time. In 2019, the Congress had finished fourth in Sirsa, which the HLP had won by just 602 votes.
Among the seven seats that the Independents had won in 2019, the BJP won four, the Congress two, and the INLD one this time.
The new House also reflects the BJP’s strengthening hold in the Grand Trunk Road belt, the Yadav belt, southern Haryana and the National Capital Region (NCR), specifically in constituencies bordering Uttar Pradesh and Delhi. However, the Congress was able to strengthen its hold in seats bordering Punjab.
In Central Haryana and other Jat-dominated regions, both the BJP and Congress were able to win seats. Among the 22 seats the BJP won this year that it hadn’t in 2019, six fall in the Jat belt, including Gohana, Kharkhauda, Safidon, Sonipat, Dadri and Uchana Kalan.
In the GT Road Belt, the BJP was able to win seven seats that it had not in 2019, helping it expand its presence in what was already a stronghold region. The Congress too gained though by five seats in this region. The GT Road belt has 25 seats spread across six districts.
The new political map of Haryana also shows that the BJP and Congress’s seats are concentrated in patches across the state. For example, of the BJP’s total 48 seats, 21 seats span from central Haryana to the UP border, while another 24 are spread from central Haryana towards the borders of Delhi and Rajasthan.
The Congress’s seats include a concentration of 18 constituencies between central Haryana to the western parts of the state, and 12 seats concentrated to the north along the Punjab border.
Out of the 15 Assembly seats bordering the Aam Aadmi Party-ruled Punjab, the Congress won 11, the BJP three, and the INLD one. Significantly, eight of the Congress’s new seats border Punjab, while the BJP won only three new seats along the Punjab border.
