In Haryana, Congress, BJP vie to woo Brahmins before 2024: Deputy CM pitch to Mahakumbh

In April this year, the CM had released a postage stamp in Parshuram’s name and declared Parshuram Jayanti a gazetted holiday in the state.

Last week, addressing an event in Rohtak, the Leader of Opposition (LoP) and two-time CM, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, a Jat stalwart, promised one of the four Deputy CMs from the Brahmin community if the Congress is voted to power in 2024.

Among the larger communities in Jat-dominated Haryana, Brahmins account for about 12 per cent of the state’s population.

In the 2014 Assembly polls, when the BJP reached the majority mark for the first time by winning 47 seats in the 90-member House, the party’s state chief Ram Bilas Sharma, a Brahmin leader, was among the front-runners for the CM’s post. However, springing a surprise, the BJP leadership picked Khattar, a Punjabi leader, as its CM nominee. Ram Bilas lost his seat in the 2019 election.

Haryana’s first CM Bhagwat Dayal Sharma of the Congress was a Brahmin and the only one from the community to have become the CM since the formation of Haryana on November 1, 1966. However, he was replaced by Rao Birender Singh after just a few months.

From 1968 till date, the Jat leaders have mostly ruled the state, barring a few exceptions including Rao Birender Singh of the Vishal Haryana Party, Banarsi Das Gupta and Bhajan Lal of the Congress besides the incumbent Khattar.

“Although BJP has never done caste politics, but traditionally the Jats had not been voting for the BJP in Haryana. In the current scenario, there are three factions of top Jat leaders in Haryana – Bhupinder Singh Hooda of Congress, Om Prakash Chautala and Abhay Chautala of INLD and Dushyant Chautala of JJP. There is a viewpoint that the Jat votes are likely to get divided among the three Jat factions of three parties. That is one of the reasons the BJP is trying to woo the Brahmin voters besides Baniyas and Punjabi communities,” a senior BJP leader told The Indian Express.

This has also heightened the aspirations of the Brahmin leaders within the BJP. At a rally in May last year, the BJP’s Rohtak MP Arvind Sharma made a strong pitch for a Brahmin CM in the state.

The BJP’s Rajya Sabha MP Kartikeya Sharma has been touring Haryana for mass mobilisation for the Brahmin Mahakumbh. So far, he has already visited Karnal, Panipat, Kind, Kaithal, Charkhi Dadri, Jhajjar, Bhiwani, Ambala and Gurgaon in this regard.

While the Congress leaders say the BJP has got into an overdrive to woo Brahmins after Hooda’s Rohtak announcement, Khattar slammed him for “doing divisive, caste politics”.

Hooda, however, told The Indian Express, “I am not the one who does divisive politics. I am the one, who is spreading love among all the communities unlike BJP that divided people in the name of caste.”

Reacting to Hooda’s Deputy CM proposal, Ram Bilas Sharma recently said the Brahmin community has its eyes set on a “bigger seat”, in what was a reference to the CM’s post.