Five reasons for the BJP’s unprecedented third-time win in Haryana

The Assembly election results on Tuesday show that the Bharatiya Janata Party is set to form the government in Haryana. The result is unprecedented: this is the first time any party has won three consecutive elections in the state. But the BJP thwarted Haryana’s culture of anti-incumbency and proved most exit polls wrong by exploiting the state’s Jat vs non-Jat faultline.

As of 6 pm on Tuesday, the Hindutva party has won or is leading in 50 of the 90 seats in the assembly and is on track to hit its best-ever performance in Haryana. It had won 47 seats in the state assembly in 2014, when it came to power in the state for the first time. In 2019, it had secured 40.

BJP on top

The Congress will be disappointed by its performance. The party is set to improve slightly on its 2019 tally of 31 seats in 2019.

Both the parties have received roughly the same percentage of votes across the state: about 39%. This represents a slight increase from the BJP’s vote share of 36.5% in 2019 and a significant improvement on the Congress’ vote share of 28% that year.

The Congress’ improvements have come largely at the cost of the Jannayak Janata Party, which has received less than 1% of the votes polled. The upstart party had won ten seats in its electoral debut in 2019 and formed a surprise post-poll coalition government with the BJP.

The Jannayak Janata Party president, former Haryana Deputy Chief Minister Dushyant Chautala, lost his seat of Uchana Kalan, receiving less than 5% of the votes.

The Indian National Lok Dal, once a powerful force in the state that had formed the government in 2005, is set to win only two seats, if the evening trends hold. It had won a single seat in 2019.

After a resurgent Congress won half of Haryana’s Lok Sabha seats in May, popular opinion and electoral momentum in the state looked to be against the BJP. The Congress was perceived as the favourite to return to power in the state after a decade.

The BJP’s bounceback can be attributed to five key factors.

1. BJP tapped Haryana’s Jat vs Non-Jat polarisation

Political fortunes in Haryana have historically been shaped by the state’s dominant Jat community. Even though Jats comprise only about a fifth of the state’s population, most of the state’s chief ministers have come from the community.

The Jat community’s dominance has created resentment among non-Jat voters. The BJP has used that to build its political fortunes.

The BJP came to power for the first time in Haryana in 2014 by cobbling together a coalition of non-Jat backward caste voters. It has since stitched up a broad coalition of voters spanning several communities. Apart from its traditional vote bank of Punjabi Hindus and Haryanvi Brahmins, it also garnered support from backward class communities – numerically large and varied groups that had previously never voted on unified lines.

In March, by replacing Manohar Lal Khattar as the state’s chief minister with Nayab Singh Saini, the party killed two birds with one stone.

It countered the anti-incumbency sentiment that had welled up against Khattar over nine-and-a-half years of his tenure, during which he had acquired the reputation of being an arrogant and aloof leader.

By putting Saini, a member of the Other Backward Classes, at the helm of the government, it earned goodwill among voters from those groups.

The party’s election campaign continued this focus on non-Jat voters, Haryana-based senior journalist Mahesh Kumar Vaid told Scroll.

2. Congress focused only on Jats

The Congress’ campaign and electoral strategy was led by leader of opposition and former chief minister Bhupender Singh Hooda and his son, Rohtak MP Deepender Singh Hooda.

There was a perception that the Hoodas would form a Jat-partisan government if the Congress were to return to power. “The Hoodas focused only on Jat politics,” Haryana-based independent journalist Mandeep Punia told Scroll. He added that they did not pay enough attention to non-Jat voters.

“They patronised some non-Jat leaders without trying to engage with the people of these communities,” he added.

This is why the election result may be seen as a mandate for a non-Jat government rather than a vote of confidence in the BJP administration. This is illustrated by the BJP handing tickets to only nine of its 12 ministers in Saini’s council of ministers. Of these eight, only three won their seats.

3. Factionalism within Haryana Congress

Bhupender Hooda excluded several other party leaders in the state in order to exercise complete control over the party’s affairs in the state. Hooda reportedly chose 70 of the party’s 90 candidates in the state.

Several local journalists told Scroll that different leaders within the party sought to actively undermine the campaigns of the candidates from other camps. This led to the Congress functioning below full strength and boosted the main opposition candidates, which in most seats were from the BJP.

4. Lack of Dalit support for Congress

The Congress’ improved performance in the Lok Sabha election across the country was in part attributed to it performing well with Dalit voters.

Dalits form about 20% of the electorate in the state. It was expected that the Congress would secure most of the Dalit votes in Haryana due in part to the presence in the party of Kumari Selja, probably the tallest Dalit politician in the state and the elevation of another Dalit leader, Udai Bhan, to the post of Haryana Congress president.

However, Selja’s well-documented rift with Hooda and her absence from the campaign trail may have led to a split in the Dalit vote.

“I only saw the BJP conduct Dalit outreach events,” Jind-based journalist Vicky Sharma told Scroll. The Congress didn’t conduct a single such event.”

5. The Sangh’s on-ground mobilisation

The BJP’s ideological parent organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, campaigned extensively in the state in the run-up to the election to mobilise voters to vote as Hindus, rather than along caste lines.

“The RSS and all its associates – such as the Bajrang Dal, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh and the Akhil Bharatiya Vidhyarthi Parishad – campaigned heavily for the BJP,” said Vaid. “They contributed to the polarisation of anti-Jat votes in the BJP’s favour.”

In stark contrast, the Congress had no on-ground organisation, Punia said. “The Congress didn’t even have district party heads,” he pointed out. He indicated that the party’s leadership suffered from complacency and didn’t focus on mass mobilisation.