New Delhi: Taking the voters for granted did not work for the BJP this time. The slogan, “Ab ki baar 75 paar” about the 90 seats in Haryana and 220-plus target of 228 Assembly berths in Maharashtra fell by the wayside.
The BJP, which brazenly ignored local issues, refused to address economic slowdown, unemployment and stuck instead to contentious national issues — abrogation of Article 370 and the National Register of Citizens (NRC) — was delivered a body blow by voters in both the states.
There are already talks of replacing Punjabi Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar with a Jat face in Haryana.
If Haryana turned into an unmitigated horror show for the BJP with a hung Assembly and six ministers losing the polls, in Maha-rashtra, despite the NDA’s win, BJP was put on the racks as its ally and bugbear Shiv Sena began talking of a “50-50 deal” for the Chief Minister’s post.
Despite the poor show in Haryana, the BJP, which was six short of the simple majority of 46 seats has won the support of four of the seven Independent MLAs. Now just two seats short of majority, Mr Khattar is all set to stake claim to form the government. The party has flown the Independent MLAs to Delhi to “keep them safe” from “poachers”.
The by-polls held in 51 Assembly seats also did not go the BJP way. Even though the BJP held on to 30 Assembly berths, the Congress managed to win 12 and eight went to others.
Gujarat, the home turf of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, threw up a major surprise with the Congress winning three of the six Assembly by-polls. The BJP has won two and was leading in one. Turncoat Alpesh Thakor, who had quit the Congress to join the BJP, lost the byelection to Radhanpur Assembly seat in Gujarat.
Even though the Congress has miles to go, it was celebrating the triumph of the old guard. Despite Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s open attempts to sideline former chief minister and Jat leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda, the elections in Har-yana witnessed the return of the “Hooda factor”.
The Congress’ battle plan to stick to local issues and play the Jat-Dalit card outwitted the BJP.
Following its poor show, the BJP high command is now worried about the forthcoming polls in Jharkhand at the end of this year and Delhi next year.
In Haryana, the BJP bagged 40 seats, Congress 31, Jananayak Janata Party (JJP) 10, INLD one and others seven so far. In Maharashtra, the BJP-Shiv Sena combine was leading in 158 seats, Congress-NCP in 106 and others in 23.
The break-up shows the BJP winning 103 seats (19 seats short of what it got in 2014) and Shiv Sena 56.
While the BJP high command went into a huddle after the “shocking” outcome, some saffron functionaries felt that the “sheer arrogance” of the party leaders after the overwhelming victory in the Lok Sabha polls was one of the “major reasons” for the party’s “underwhelming performance”.
In Haryana, two crucial communities, Jats and Dalits, who had voted for Prime Minister Modi during the Lok Sabha polls in 2014 and 2019, deserted the BJP in this Assembly polls. They turned to the Congress and the JJP instead.
The BJP, which has been winning elections solely on the popularity of Modi, had chosen to ignore the caste cauldron in the Haryana which is split between Jats and non-Jats. Mainly an agrarian state, Jats constitute nearly 29 per cent of the state’s population and remain the dominant vote bank. Dalits and Schedule castes constitute about 22 per cent and the rest are Brahimns, Rajputs and Baniyas.
The Jat community felt betrayed when Khattar, a Punjabi, was made the chief minister. While the community went with Modi in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls because of the lack of a “credible alternative”, it rejected the “Punjabi” chief minister during the Assembly polls. The Jats consolidated against the BJP as the party went all out to woo the non-Jat communities and unite them behind its first-time MLA and chief minister, Khattar. So harsh was the backlash, that the BJP’s tallest Jat leaders in Haryana — BJP state unit chief Subhash Barala and finance minister Captain Abhimanyu — lost the elections.
