On 9 October, the Congress approached the Election Commission submitting its first set of complaints regarding the Haryana Assembly election results. These set of complaints are mostly regarding EVMs being 'fully charged' at the time of counting. The argument they are making is that EVMs that have been used can't be fully charged and therefore this is a sign that the EVM may have been tampered with or replaced.
So far, the party has filed complaints pertaining to 10 Assembly seats. It has said that it will submit more complaints within 48 hours.
The Congress' complaints come a day after the results for the recently concluded Assembly elections in Haryana were announced, in which the BJP won a surprise victory. Surprising because not a single exit poll had predicted a BJP win. The Congress had made a statement on 8 October that it will be challenging the verdict.
So was the election really manipulated, as the Congress claims? Or is the party looking for excuses for its own failings?
To answer these questions, we dived into the data from both the Assembly election results as well as from the Lok Sabha elections that took place five months ago.
Here are 3 key trends we found.
1. Tacit Understanding Between BJP and INLD-BSP-HLP Alliance?
Now, it is very common to blame smaller parties for the loss of bigger parties. Every party has a right to contest so we should be careful in using words like 'spoiler'.
However, in the case of the INLD-BSP-HLP alliance there seems to be evidence of an understanding with the BJP.
This is particularly clear in the segments that fall in Sirsa Lok Sabha seat. For example, in Sirsa Assembly segment, the BJP withdrew its candidate and announced support for Gopal Kanda of the Haryana Lokhit Party, a pre-poll ally of the INLD and BSP.
However, it wasn't just about one seat. Compared to the Lok Sabha elections, BJP's vote share complete collapsed in three Assembly constituencies - Dabwali, Ratia and Ellenabad. Nearly one lakh voters who voted for the BJP in these 3 seats in the Lok Sabha elections, did not vote for it in the Assembly polls.
In percentage terms, 82 percent BJP Lok Sabha voters in Dabwali, 72 percent in Ellenabad and 65 percent in Rania voted for a different party in the Assembly elections. National parties do lose some votes between Lok Sabha and Assembly polls but the quantum is never this huge. Moreover, it is difficult to understand how a party like the BJP with huge resources and a massive cadre strength would end up losing 70 percent of its voters in a few seats. Unless its part of a plan.
Data shows that these votes didn't go to the Congress. In fact Congress too lost over 18000 votes in Dabwali compared to the Lok Sabha polls and made only minor gains in the other seats. It seems that these votes were transferred to the INLD-led alliance.
In contrast to the massive losses in these segments, BJP made sizable gains in some of the other seats in Sirsa LS seat. For instance, it gained over 24,000 votes in the Tohana, 11,000 in Fatehabad and about 9000 in Ratia compared to the Lok Sabha polls.
The result of these changes was that the Congress, which had a lead in all nine segments of Sirsa in the Lok Sabha polls ended up losing three seats in the Assembly polls. Two of these went to the INLD and one to the BJP.
It needs to be mentioned that the INLD-led alliance was competing for the same vote bank as the Congress - Jats and Dalits. In a couple of seats, the alliance secured more votes than the BJP's margin of victory, giving rise to allegations that they helped the BJP.
This pattern could be seen in Narwana and Assandh constituencies.
2. Rebels Harmed Congress But There's a Twist
Congress lost a number of seats due to rebel candidates. Here are some examples.
Uchana Kalan: There were not one but two Congress rebels who together polled over 38,000 votes. Congress lost the seat by just 32 votes.
Kalka: Congress rebel Gopal Sukhomajri got about 31,000 votes, the BJP won by 28000.
Badhra: Rebel Somveer Ghasola secured almost 27,000 votes. BJP defeated the Congress by 7585.
Gohana: Former youth Congress leader Harsh Chhikara got 14700 votes. Congress' lost the seat by 10,000.
Here's a twist.
In some seats, the 'rebel candidates' secured more votes than the official Congress candidate.
Pundri: There were again two Congress rebels who together polled more votes than even the winning candidate of the BJP. Satbir Bhana, one of the rebels and known to be earlier from Randeep Surjewala's faction in the Haryana Congress, polled more votes than the official Congress candidate.
Ambala Cantonment: Rebel candidate Chitra Sarwara secured 52000 votes and the official candidate got a little over 14,000. BJP's Anil Vij won the seat by just about 7000 votes.
Ballabhgarh: Congress rebel Sharda Rathore came second while the official Congress candidate was a distant fourth.
Bahadurgarh: Congress rebel Rajesh Joon ended up winning the seat while the official Congress candidate Rajinder Singh Joon stood third.
When the so-called rebel candidate ends up polling more votes than the official nominee, it isn't so much a case of rebellion as it of bad ticket selection. It indicates that either surveys were not followed in allotting some tickets or that the surveying itself was poor.
3. Why Did Congress' Votes See a Massive Fall in Some Seats?
In the Lok Sabha elections, the Congress was leading in 46 out of 90 seats in Haryana and secured a vote share of 47 percent along with its ally AAP. Its vote share fell by about eight percentage points between the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections.
What is surprising, however, is the massive reduction in the Congress' votes in a number of constituencies. In as many as 36 constituencies, Congress total votes fell by over 10,000 compared to the Lok Sabha elections. In 18 seats, the Congress' fall was over 20,000 votes respectively.
This is huge especially as the overall number of votes cast actually went up in the Assembly polls compared to the LS polls.
Just to give an idea of how big the Congress' decline in votes is in these seats, let's look at it percentage terms. In as many as 28 constituencies, Congress lost 20 percent of the votes it had secured in the Lok Sabha elections. Just a clarification, we aren't talking about vote share here but a change in absolute number of votes cast for the Congress.
Basically in these 28 seats, one in five voters who voted for the Congress in the Lok Sabha elections decided to switch in the Assembly polls. In 16 seats almost a third of the Congress voters from the Lok Sabha elections changed allegiances.
Why did such a big shift happen, that too in just five months?
If Congress was the incumbent, one could still attributed it to anti-incumbency at the state level.
The biggest reduction in votes has happened in the Hooda family bastion - Rohtak. Congress' Deepender Singh Hooda secured 7.83 lakh votes in the 9 segments that fall in Rohtak LS seat. In the same 9 segments, the Congress got 5.93 lakh votes in the Assembly polls, a reduction of 1.9 lakh votes.
This broadly means that one in four voters who voted to send Deepender Hooda to the Lok Sabha did not vote for the Congress in the Assembly elections despite his father being the de-facto CM candidate. This is very difficult to understand. It's not as if something dramatic happened in the last five months that caused Bhupinder Singh Hooda or the Congress' popularity to nosedive in his own bastion. This wasn't reflected in even one survey.
Congress' votes also reduced by over a lakh each in Ambala, Sirsa and Faridabad Lok Sabha seats.
It is understandable that some minor reduction could take place due to local factors, candidate selection, increased importance of smaller parties and Independents in Assembly polls compared to Lok Sabha elections. But these cannot explain such a large scale reduction.
This fall is unexpected for another reason. In the last 10 years, the Congress has tended to do better in Assembly elections than Lok Sabha elections, especially when it is up against the BJP. For instance in 2019, the Congress was wiped out in Haryana in the Lok Sabha elections but made sizable gains in the Assembly elections a few months later. This has been the pattern across the Hindi heartland.
The only exceptions to this are voters from religious minorities - Muslims in Delhi, Christians in Goa, Meghalaya and Kerala have consolidated behind Congress at the national level but not so much at the state level. Even many Sikhs in Punjab decisively voted against Congress in the 2022 Assembly polls but supported it in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
But minorities are a very small part of Haryana's demography so this cannot explain the reduction in Congress' votes between the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections.
There can be three possible explanations.
1. An entire caste group that voted for Congress at the Centre did not support it at the state level. This happened to the BJP in 2019 - Jats decisively voted for it at the Lok Sabha level but against it at the Assembly level in the same year.
It is possible that this may have happened to the Congress this time. But if it has happened then the community in question may not be Jats, but Dalits. It is possible that many Dalits may have shifted away from the Congress due to the perceived insult to Kumari Selja as well as the BJP's sub-classification policy. The BSP's rise and Congress' decline in a seat like Ateli does indicate a shift among Dalits.
However, this wasn't captured in any survey or exit poll. The Jat shift of 2019 did get captured in a few surveys back then.
2. Such a big reduction can happen if there has been a degree of sabotage by sections within the party. The large number of rebels and the high number of votes secured by them could possibly be due to collusion or incompetence by sections within the Congress.
But the question here is - why didn't any survey catch this? Pollsters certainly didn't catch it but did Congress' own surveys also miss that such a big shift is taking place? And if they did notice, why were no correctives taken?
3. The third explanation is what Congress is claiming - that the election has been manipulated. So far the Congress has filed complaints regarding EVMs in 10 seats:
Narnaul
Dabwali
Panipat City
Loharu
Karnal
Hodal
Indri
Dadri
Rewari
Kalka
In terms of vote change between Lok Sabha and Assembly, there is no clear pattern in these seats.
There has been no dramatic change between the Lok Sabha polls and Assembly polls in Narnaul and Karnal. In Panipat City and Indri, the Congress has actually made sizable gains and BJP has lost some ground compared to the LS polls.
In Rewari and Kalka, the BJP and Congress' votes have reduced but reduction in the BJP's votes is more than that of the Congress.
In Loharu, Hodal and Dadri, BJP has made surprise gains.
The case of Dabwali we have already discussed in the first subhead.
What We Know So Far
To conclude, this is what we can establish through data so far:
The BJP probably had some kind of informal adjustment with the INLD-led alliance.
Elements within the Congress harmed the party's prospects by supporting rebels or selecting weak candidates in a few seats.
Both these may not be great from an ethical point of view but they don't count as a malpractice.
Congress' went through a sharp decline in over 20 seats. Why this decline took place is the main story of this election.
