Congress is ahead, but all is not lost for BJP in Haryana

The Congress, after its roaring performance in the Lok Sabha elections, is super confident of returning to power in Haryana. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which bagged all 10 Lok Sabha seats in 2019, could win only 5 in the 2024 parliamentary polls, with vote share falling behind the INDIA bloc. The BJP secured leads in 44 of 90 assembly seats while the Congress was ahead in 42, and AAP in 4.

Although this points to a neck-and-neck race, the BJP's challenges run deeper. For instance, in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP had secured lead in 79 seats but it could win only 40 seats in the assembly polls held just 6 months later. The saffron party is now facing a strong anti-incumbency and the fallout from long-standing farmer protests and wrestlers' agitation.

Despite the odds stacking up against it, the BJP remains hopeful of turning the tide in its favor with social engineering. As the Congress is riding on anti-incumbency and consolidation of Jat votes, the saffron party is hoping for a split in votes as Haryana is set for a multi-cornered contest. Besides BJP and Congress, other contestants are JJP-Bhim Army and INLD-BSP. The AAP is in talks with the Congress. If that does not materialise, AAP will also go solo, making it a five-way contest.

BJP's Sanju Verma has downplayed the notion that Jats will be the decisive factor in this assembly polls. In a panel discussion, she said the OBC votes in Haryana are at more than 40% and Dalit votes at more than 20%, which means 55 to 60% of the votes are still up for grabs for the BJP.

Psephologist Yashwant Deshmukh said that the saffron party was on a sticky wicket to start with but added that the thing that goes in favor of the party is its non-Jat politics in Haryana. "So even if 100% Jats end up voting against the BJP, it is not bothered about that because they have won two elections primarily polarising the non-Jat voters of Haryana," he said in a panel discussion on India Today.

The biggest problem for the Congress is its internal factionalism, Deshmukh said and also pointed to pushbacks from former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda against an alliance with the AAP. "Let me say it upfront, in our trackers, we know for sure that Hooda remains the most popular face of the Congress leadership in Haryana. So obviously it is not going to be easy for the central leadership to do things in Haryana."

Deshmukh, however, said that the problem with the BJP right now is that in the 2024 Lok Sabha election, the AAP-Congress alliance polled more votes than the saffron party. "If you take away the Modi dividend, the BJP is on a sticky wicket to start with. Add on to that 10 years of anti-incumbency, then the problem of these Khaap Panchayats, and the wrestler protests."

Amitabh Tiwari, a political analyst, said the saffron party is confident because there is a natural consolidation against dominant communities in a state, so it is easy to consolidate the non-dominant communities. "That's what BJP has been doing for the past 10 years."

Tiwari said the Congress did well in the Lok Sabha polls because it got significant support from the Dalits as its narrative of the BJP changing the Constitution worked. "However, that narrative is not that strong now as BJP has come out saying that there is no such plan. The BJP anyway does not have the numbers to change the Constitution. So if the Dalit votes - that 68% who backed the Congress party...if there is a split in that...if BJP gets a significant amount of that votes back to its fold, then that could change things."

Tiwari said that this Jat-Dalit-Muslim combination is a very brittle combination. "There has been a history of violence between Jats and Dalits in Haryana. So this combination is not easy to maintain. That's why the BJP feels confident." He also suggested that a multi-cornered contest may favour the BJP.