Spectacular gain for BJP in Haryana shows strategic excellence of leadership

Congress meets unexpected setback, its leadership needs to learn its lessons

By Dr. Gyan Pathak

Haryana assembly election, the result of which came out on Tuesday, has sprung up a great surprise belying almost all political projections and analyses predicting Congress to wrest power from the BJP. However, Congress met a serious setback and the BJP spectacularly gained. It marks the reversal of political fortune, which shows strategic excellence of the BJP and its leadership on the one hand, while Congress setback marks the need of the party learning some lesson from it.

Being one of the Hindi belt states – the current trend may be a signal for the future political trend in other Hindi belt states, unless Congress and INDIA bloc come out with some innovative political strategy to put a break on it.

Just before the Lok Sabha elections were announced, NDA in Haryana was broken and BJP and JJP parted their ways. Sensing a serious level of anti-incumbency against its chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar, the party replaced him with a new chief minister Nayab Singh Saini in March this year.. However, the political decline of the BJP could not be stopped until the Lok Sabha election results were out on June 4, which showed the decline. Out of all 10 seats won by BJP in Haryana, the party lost its 5 seats to Congress. Congress was obviously resurgent.

Lok Sabha Election result showed that Congress had gained lead in 42 and BJP in 44 Vidhan Sabha segments. It was obvious from the result that the contest between the two in the 90 seat Haryana Vidhan Sabha would be closer than what the Congress leaders had been expecting. The reason for Congress' expectation was their belief that anti-incumbency will worsen with heightened anger among farmers and youths. However, the Vidhan Sabha election result shows that it did not happen. Contests between the two parties were even closer than expected with the regional parties like JJP and INLD performing very badly and remained in the political margin of the state.

The important factors behind the Congress setback seem to be their overconfidence which prevented them from strategizing vertically to the micro or ground level. The Central political leadership chiefly dependent on former chief minister and senior Congress leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda, which did not pay. Rift within the party cropped up during the election campaign and political leaders like Kumari Selja and others were seen not unison with the overall strategy adopted by Hooda.

Secondly, the Congress chiefly relied on Jat, Dalit and Muslim votes around which the entire political strategy of the party was woven. In this course of the strategy, other castes, especially marginal castes felt ignored. Dominant castes also were not happy for several reasons including the share in the organizational structure of the party.

Infighting has been decidedly the top factor behind Congress setback. Top state leaders were even seen talking against each other, and some of them over the question of who would be the chief minister. In their over confidence they thought they would surely come to power and had become complaisant.

On the other hand, the BJP continued to consolidate non-Jat, non-Muslim and OBC communities. The chief minister Nayab Singh Saini himself is from the OBC community. BJP tried hard for Hindu consolidation, and it seems that the strategy is still working in the Hindi belt.

Saini was believed to be a weak chief minister of the states and political commentators generally believed that he can't lead the BJP in Haryana to reverse the declining BJP's fortune in the state. However, he must be credited for his silent but excellent political strategy of reaching out to non-dominant castes and winning them over to BJP just within months. He had actually launched several schemes for marginalized and unprivileged people of the state which ultimately paid.

BJP had also encouraged several political leaders of the Congress and other regional parties to revolt and contest against official candidates as independents. Such candidates in the fray cut substantial votes of the Congress and the other political parties such as JJP and INLD.

BJP's gain was chiefly due to loss of the JJP and INLD in the rural areas, while maintaining its supremacy in the urban areas. Congress failed to dent the BJP's support base in the urban areas of the state.

Congress in particular and INDIA bloc in general must learn lessons from the Haryana setback, both in terms of loss in number of seats as well as its support base among the non-dominant communities. Though the party had been promising a caste census, it failed in Haryana in gaining any significant support from OBC communities.

The election result signals even closer contests between the BJP and Congress in the time to come. There has been a very small difference in BJP's and Congress' vote shares. Congress therefore will need to contest elections in the immediate future in alliance with INDIA bloc constituents to take on BJP. It also needs to restrain its squabbling leaders and widen its strategy both horizontally and vertically from top to the ground level.

(IPA Service