Following failed seat-sharing talks between the BJP and the Dushyant Chautala-led Jannayak Janta Party (JJP) for Haryana’s 10 Lok Sabha constituencies, the BJP dissolved their alliance on Tuesday, and subsequently formed a new government with support from Independents and Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini at the helm. The reshuffle by the BJP appears to be more driven by the Assembly elections in the state later this year, rather than the Lok Sabha polls, which the BJP had swept last time. Over the past two decades, the BJP and Congress have been the dominant parties in Haryana. In the Assembly, after two consecutive terms under the Congress’s Bhupinder Singh Hooda, from 2005 to 2014, the BJP has held power for the last two terms, beginning with the Narendra Modi wave in 2014. The Lok Sabha polls have reflected this trend, with the Congress winning the most seats in 2004 and 2009, but the BJP taking the lead in 2014 and 2019. After Haryana was carved out of Punjab in 1966, the state Assembly was dominated by the Congress until 1996, interrupted by the Janata Party’s single term in power beginning in 1977 after the Emergency, and the Lok Dal government’s brief stint from 1987 to 1991, after which the Congress returned. However, the BJP has been on the rise. In 1996, the BJP supported the Haryana Vikas Party to form the government. In 2000, the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD), the predominantly Jat party founded by former Deputy Prime Minister Chaudhary Devi Lal, came to power. After two Congress governments led by Hooda, it was in 2014 that Khattar became the state’s first BJP CM. Months after the BJP won 7 of the 10 Lok Sabha seats in the state, reducing the Congress to just 1 and the INLD to 2, the BJP went on to win an outright majority in the 90-member Assembly, with 47 seats, up from just 4 seats in 2009. The Congress's Assembly tally fell to 15 from 47, and the INLD’s to 19 from 31. For the BJP though, the concern is likely to be the 2019 Assembly polls. While it had swept all the 10 Lok Sabha seats, its tally had gone down to 40 seats in the Assembly, leaving it 5 short of the majority mark. The Congress had recovered to 31 seats in the Assembly, but the INLD had won just 1, hit by the formation of the JJP as a breakaway faction in 2018. The JJP had ended up as the kingmaker with 10 seats, with its support helping the BJP form the government. The Congress will be hoping this time to capitalise on the BJP-JJP split, eat into the BJP’s non-Jat support base and play up the ongoing farmers’ protest, having already promised to fulfil the demand for a legally guaranteed minimum support price (MSP) for crops. In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the JJP that was months into its formation had not played a major role, finishing as the runner-up in just the Hisar seat, contested by party chief Dushyant, and getting only 4.9% of the overall vote share. The Congress was the runner-up in every other seat. In terms of overall vote share, the BJP had secured 58.2% of the vote share, up from 34.8% in 2014. The Congress vote share had also risen, from 23% in 2014 to 28.5% in 2019, though it had failed to win any seats. In the Assembly election that followed, however, the JJP had turned out to be the difference-maker. It had secured a significant 14.8% of the vote share compared to the BJP’s 36.5% and the Congress’s 28.1%. However, apart from the 10 seats it won, of the 87 it contested, the JJP was the runner-up in only 10 other seats, finishing third in 36 and fourth or worse in 31. The JJP’s impact was seen as more in cutting into the INLD’s votes, reducing it to just 2.4% of the vote share. In 23 seats, the votes the JJP got were more than the margin separating the winners and losers. Of these, 11 seats were won by the BJP and 12 by the Congress. Now, by dropping the JJP, the BJP has taken a chance of losing the Jat voters. However, having recently got the Jayant Chaudhary-led RLD to its side, which has influence in Western UP and parts of Haryana and Rajasthan, it may hope to recoup some of it. Also, the BJP government's recent crackdown on protesting farmers at its border with Punjab indicates it is perhaps prepared to lose some of the Jat vote, on account of both farmer anger as well as the allegations made by women wrestlers belonging to the community against senior BJP MP Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh. Plus, the BJP has been courting a non-Jat base in the state. Former CM Khattar too is not a Jat, and his selection was seen as part of the party’s experimentation with breaking the stranglehold of one community in a state. His replacement Saini is an OBC leader, and is expected to help the BJP consolidate its OBC voter base.
