The results of the Haryana state Assembly elections have breathed new life into the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The 2024 general election had come as a big blow, but the verdict on 8 October signals a renewed consolidation.
If this continues in Maharashtra and Jharkhand, then the setback of the general election may begin to look like a blip.
For the Congress, these results expose the central leadership’s lack of ground connect and its inability to manage internal factionalism. The election underlines their election mismanagement in Haryana where victory was taken for granted.
The only saving grace for the grand old party and the INDIA bloc is that the Jammu & Kashmir Assembly election has gone as predicted, with the National Conference (NC)-Congress alliance getting a comfortable majority.
However, the Congress has been unable to take on the BJP effectively in Jammu, with only one of its 29 candidates in the region securing a victory, i.e. in Rajouri.
In both Haryana and J&K, the smaller parties have been marginalised. The political presence of Mehbooba Mufti's People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and Sajjad Lone's People's Conference has shrunk in J&K. The Apni Party of Altaf Bukhari has disappeared, while Sheikh Engineer Rashid – the giant killer of the 2024 Lok Sabha election – barely managed to retain his pocket borough of Langate for his brother. The Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) hopefuls have bitten the dust.
In Haryana, the Jannayak Janata Party (JJP) of Dushyant Chautala and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) have not been able to win a single seat. The national parties, in effect, are back in front.
Overplaying the Jat Card in Haryana
Two things are clear from the Haryana results. Firstly, the Congress overplayed the Jat card, and secondly, the Scheduled Caste vote split with a significant proportion moving to the BJP which already had the OBC and the Punjabi vote. The Congress misread Haryana politics as still being Jat-dominated.
The BJP had realised this much earlier when it appointed a Punjabi Khatri, Manohar Lal Khattar, as its chief minister in the state.
Dalits comprise 21 percent of Haryana’s population, and of these, nearly half are Jatavs (officially called Chamars in the state). Despite Rahul Gandhi's caste-centric approach to politics that we have been witnessing, the BJP managed to portray the Congress as a party not particularly friendly to Dalits and discriminating against them in the distribution of tickets – the party gave 35 seats to Jats who form about 20 percent of the population.
It also played on the marginalisation of Kumari Selja, a Dalit leader of the party. By being soft on Kumari Selja and attacking the Congress’ Jat face, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, the BJP stoked apprehensions of 'Jat Raj' in Haryana. With the Congress playing the Jat card aggressively, this helped create a Jat vs non-Jat binary.
This assessment is supported by the BJP’s virtual sweep of the Ahirwal belt (OBCs, who use Rao instead of Yadav in their names) and the GT Road-Karnal Punjabi-speaking belt. This social combine led the BJP to power in Haryana in 2014 and 2019 as well.
Polarisation in J&K
If caste and community trumped other issues in Haryana, in the J&K elections, the BJP successfully maintained polarisation between Jammu and Kashmir. The communal divide was encouraged and facilitated by leveraging soft separatists into electoral participation such as Engineer Rashid’s Awami Ittehad Party and former members of the JeI.
This did not have much impact on the Kashmir Valley, where none of the independents allegedly supported by the BJP won. This was most evident in the dismal performance of the JeI chief’s son Kalimullah Lone in Langate, where he was in the fifth position, and the defeat of another former JeI member Sayar Ahmad Reshi to veteran CPI(M) leader Yusuf Tarigami in Kulgam.
However, the candidature of Engineer Rashid’s party and JeI independents in the Valley had the desired polarising impact for the BJP in Jammu – spreading fear of separatism and revival of terrorism.
Farooq Abdullah seems to think that the overwhelming majority for the NC in the Valley was a vote against the abrogation of the special status of J&K. At any rate, the anger against the BJP and its proxies was clearly evident.
The five posts to the Assembly to be nominated by the BJP-appointed governor will no longer be an advantage to the BJP in forming a government as the 48 seats won by the NC-Congress alliance far outnumber the BJP’s 27.
Ultimately, neither the bifurcation of the erstwhile state, the gerrymandering of constituencies to increase the political weightage of Jammu, and fielding proxies in the Valley, nor the nominated seats provided by the J&K Reorganisation Act in Parliament helped the BJP’s ambition of forming a government.
Conclusion
The impact of these election results will be far-reaching. In Haryana, people will forget the misgovernance of Manohar Lal Khattar – and the BJP will feel vindicated in how it dealt with farmers' protests and the women wrestlers’ protests.
The humiliating defeat in Haryana will erode the Congress' rhetoric of Rahul Gandhi having finally arrived after the 2024 general election. The party is likely to lose steam in the run-up to the Jharkhand and Maharashtra elections. The overconfidence it displayed in Haryana is also visible in its perceptions about its potential performance in Maharashtra, which may have similar consequences.
These election results, despite the setback in J&K, will rejuvenate the BJP. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will recoup his mojo and go full steam ahead in enforcing the remaining elements of his Hindutva agenda. The use of government agencies against political critics and others may receive a new impetus, with increased impunity.
One can be certain that the balance of power between Modi and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) will change in his favour, whether this involves choosing the next BJP president or RSS Supremo Mohan Bhagwat’s regular pinpricks against Modi’s leadership (at least till the Maharashtra election results are out).
(The writer is a senior journalist based in Delhi. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)
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