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Five years ago, the BJP had a clean sweep in Haryana, winning all its 10 Lok Sabha seats, including eight with huge margins. But come Saturday, the party is likely to face an uphill task maintaining its tally – or worse, minimising its losses – due to multiple events since 2019.
If the Congress does manage to cause a dent, it would be a big achievement given that there was approximately a 30% vote-share gap between the two parties in 2019 – the BJP’s 58.02% votes, vs the Congress’s 28.42%. The other parties barely registered, with the Jannayak Janata Party getting 4.9% votes and the INLD 1.89%.
The May 25 polling is expected to remain similarly bipolar, with the Congress and BJP directly pitted against each other in nine seats. In Kurukshetra, from where Congress ally Aam Aadmi Party’s candidate is the INDIA bloc nominee, the field has opened up with the entry of the INLD’s Abhay Chautala.
One of the most significant developments since 2019 that will impact voting is the year-long 2020-21 farmer protest against the Modi government’s since-repealed farmer laws. Apart from Punjab, Haryana’s farmers were part of the protest. With over 65% of the state’s population living in rural areas, the issue has deep resonance in Haryana.
Another ongoing protest by Punjab’s farmers on the Shambhu border also caught attention here. An indication of this were the near-constant protests against almost all BJP candidates in the state through the campaign.
The second big factor has been the anger over the Modi government’s treatment of women Olympian wrestlers who accused senior BJP leader Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh of sexual harassment. Many of the wrestlers originate from the same rural belt of Haryana.
The third factor is anti-incumbency against the BJP of 10 years, ruling at both the Centre and in the state. In order to beat that, the BJP changed the Chief Minister and his Cabinet in a surprise move months ahead of the polls, replacing Manohar Lal Khattar with Nayab Singh Saini in the top post. Khattar is now the BJP candidate from Karnal, while Saini is seeking an Assembly bypoll win from the Karnal Assembly seat. The BJP also replaced six of its sitting MPs.
Apart from tapping into the anger over the farmer and wrestler issues, the Congress campaigned on issues such as price rise, unemployment, law and order, as well as the discontent over the Army’s new recruitment scheme Agnipath. Since Haryana sends a large number of men to the armed forces, it is another potent issue against the BJP.
Like in other states, for the BJP, Prime Minister Narendra Modi remained the main draw, with the party seeking votes on his name as well as the “achievements” of his government such as the abrogation of Article 370 and air strikes against Pakistan. The PM, who held three rallies in the state (in Ambala, Gohana in Sonipat and Bhiwani-Mahendragarh), also projected himself as the main issue.
The BJP constantly attacked the Congress and Aam Aadmi Party, and their leaders especially the Gandhis and Arvind Kejriwal, in its campaign.
On the other side, if there was one person who kept the Congress flag flying and ensured that the party didn’t lose momentum, it was its veteran and former chief minister Bhupinder Hooda.
Senior Congress leaders landed to campaign in the state only on May 21, with Rahul Gandhi holding two rallies (at Dadri in Mahendragarh, and in Sonipat) and addressing a ‘Samvidhan Samman Sammelan’ at Panchkula; Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge addressing a rally at Jagadhri in Yamunanagar and a press conference at Chandigarh; and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra holding a roadshow in Sirsa.
The 76-year-old Hooda, who also wrestled with challenges from within the Congress to emerge at the top, told The Indian Express: “The BJP did its bit, and we did ours… But the BJP could not narrate any of its achievements as they have done nothing. People have understood this, and shall vote for the Congress this time.”
Hooda, who came close to giving the BJP a scare in the 2019 Assembly elections as well, also has personal stakes in the Lok Sabha battle. His son Deepender is a candidate again from the Rohtak Lok Sabha seat, the family bastion from which the Hooda Junior lost in 2019 to the BJP’s Arvind Sharma by a narrow 7,503 votes.
Rohtak was in fact one seat where the Congress came closest to a win, the second being Hooda’s own – a 1.64-lakh votes defeat to the BJP’s Ramesh Chander Kaushik. In the remaining eight seats, BJP candidates won by a margin of over 3.14 lakh votes each.
The balancing of caste equations in their candidate list by both the Congress and BJP means that in a majority of the seats, candidates of the same castes are locked in battle.
Both sides also saw some extent of infighting, with a grumpy Kuldeep Bishnoi on the BJP side and a sulking Kiran Choudhry on the Congress’s. Kuldeep was hoping for a ticket for himself or son Bhavya Bishnoi, while Kiran was expecting a Congress ticket for her daughter Shruti. The leaders kept appearances up, though, and turned up to campaign for their respective parties.
Before 2019, the Congress had faced a wipeout in Haryana in the Lok Sabha polls twice – the post-Emergency 1977 elections and 1999, when the BJP came to power at the Centre. The Congress’s best years were 2004 and 2009, when it won nine out of the 10 Lok Sabha seats, in elections that saw the UPA form the government at the Centre.
Since the Modi era began, the BJP has been dominant – winning seven of the 10 Haryana Lok Sabha seats in 2014, reducing the Congress to one, followed by all in 2019.
Kumari Selja, one of Hooda’s detractors but seen as placated with a Lok Sabha ticket, said there is no way the BJP will see a repeat. “There is no factor like the Balakot air strikes this time. People are rather questioning the BJP on promises that it did not fulfill,” she told The Indian Express.
