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Journalism of Courage
One day to go for campaigning to end for the Adampur Assembly seat by-election, the poll office of AAP candidate Satender Singh, set up at his house in his native village Neoli Khurd, is empty. A former driver, Mukesh Sodhi, who looks after the office, with Singh settled in the neighbouring town of Hisar, says the family is out canvassing.
Outside, there is a crowd gathered, but it is for a scheduled poll meeting of Congress Rajya Sabha MP Deepender Singh Hooda. The villagers, bound by caste loyalty to fellow Jat Satender Singh, speak only in hushed voices, but even they admit that the AAP candidate will get only a few hundred of the 1,700 votes in his village, and maybe a thousand-odd in the entire constituency of 1.71 lakh voters.
A Congress leader who was once known to be close to the party’s non-Jat face, Bhajan Lal, and was later in the BJP, Satender Singh is believed to have been picked up by AAP due to his caste. Jats form nearly one-third of the population, and the biggest group, in the constituency. However, Congress candidate Jai Prakash, commonly known as JP, and INLD nominee Kurda Ram Numberdar are also Jats, hence potentially splitting the community’s vote.
The division of votes among the Jats will make the path even easier for the BJP’s new recruit, Bhavya Bishnoi, as, apart from the caste dynamics, Adampur is his family turf. Bhavya is the grandson of Bhajan Lal, while his father Kuldeep Bishnoi was the sitting Congress MLA before he defected to the BJP, forcing the bypoll.
A Nayak community member, who does not want to be named, says: “The Jat voters have now largely consolidated behind Jai Prakash, leaving Satender Singh and Numberdar out of the race. There would be a direct contest between Jai Prakash and Bhavya, with Satender Singh and Numberdar competing for the third spot.”
The attention of AAP, which was seen as focused on Haryana after its impressive Punjab win, has been diverted to the Gujarat and Himachal Assembly elections – further hurting Satender Singh’s chances. Haryana was seen as a natural extension for AAP given its location between party-ruled Delhi and Punjab and that Kejriwal belongs to the state.
Ahead of the announcement of the Adampur bypoll, AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal and Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann had held a rally in the seat, urging the people of Haryana to give the party a chance. Recently, Mann held another roadshow in Adampur, which has a chunk of Sikh voters. While Kejriwal was to undertake a roadshow in the constituency on Monday, AAP cancelled it due to the Gujarat bridge collapse tragedy.
Rameshwar Janga, a backward community member, says: “Bhagwan Mann’s roadshow and rally in the constituency may woo a section of the Sikh votes in favour of the AAP candidate. But there vote share is very small here. AAP convenor Arvind Kejriwal’s impact will be seen only in the 2024 Assembly elections.” According to Janga, the winner for AAP will be its promise of free electricity and water.
With chances of a victory in Adampur minimal, finishing ahead of the INLD seems to be AAP’s main goal as of now. Having lost most of its clout to the breakaway Jannayak Janata Party, which is a part of the ruling BJP coalition, the INLD has been struggling. Out of jail now after a 10-year sentence in a teacher recruitment scam, Om Prakash Chautala is 87, and is perhaps too spent and too late to bring around a turnaround now. Chautala and son Abhay Singh have been, nevertheless, holding back-to-back meetings to give the INLD a push.
Even a third-place finish in Adampur would help AAP project itself as an alternative to the well-entrenched BJP and Congress in the state. In the previous Assembly and Lok Sabha elections in the state, AAP failed to make a mark, but even opponents expect it to do better following the Punjab performance.
In May, Kejriwal addressed a rally in Kurukshetra dubbed “Ab Badlega Haryana (now Haryana will change)”, challenging the BJP to contest in 2024 under the leadership of incumbent Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar.
In June, after forming the government in Punjab, AAP contested in Haryana’s civic body polls, fielding candidates for municipal corporation heads in 45 bodies, securing 10.19% of the total polled votes, and a small municipality (Ismailabad) in Kaithal district. AAP leaders have been claiming that in the municipalities in the north, which are a BJP stronghold, its share was higher, at 16% of the votes.
However, sources admit this was lower than the party’s expectations given that the Congress, the principal opposition party, was not in the battlefield actively.
