Haryana Spotlights BJP’s Art Of Winning Lost Polls
Image credit X.com @AmitShah
BJP In Haryana Expanded Base With Turncoats To Beat Anti-Incumbency
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, October 8: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress on Tuesday evening shared a common response to the Haryana Assembly poll verdict. Both parties were surprised by the poll outcome in Haryana.
“We thought that we will give a tough contest to the Congress in the Haryana Assembly elections. But the victory with an improved tally is a sweet surprise,” said a senior BJP functionary.
The surprise for the Congress was bitter. The Congress communication in-chare and party’s general secretary, Jairam Ramesh, refused to accept the Haryana poll verdict. “The victory has been snatched from us,” said Ramesh on Tuesday evening.
Also Read: Congress Haryana Hard Landing Gives BJP Hat-Trick Win
The BJP had got a rude shock in the Lok Sabha elections in Haryana. The BJP’s tally of winning 10 Lok Sabha seats in 2019 had halved to just five in 2024.
The Congress had won five Lok Sabha seats. The Congress had failed to open an account from Haryana in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
The equal division of the Lok Sabha seats between the BJP and the Congress was almost repeated in the Assembly elections. The vote share difference between the BJP and the Congress was just 0,8 per cent.
The pollsters backed the Congress to win the Haryana elections on perceived anger among the people on issues of ‘Agniveer’, unemployment, and agrarian distress. They also counted 10-year of anti-incumbency factor in making their projections.
But the BJP lately has honed the skill of blunting anti-incumbency with change in the chief ministerial faces ahead of elections. The BJP’s experiments in Gujarat, Uttarakhand, Goa, and Tripura worked perfectly for the saffron outfit.
Also Read: Amit Shah in Haryana counters Congress MSP poll plank
Naib Singh Saini replaced Manohar Lal Khattar just a few days ahead of the Lok Sabha elections as the chief minister of Haryana. The BJP worked up base among the extremely backward castes to play the ‘Jat versus Others’ poll template.
The BJP also aggressively replaced the incumbent MLAs to beat the anti-incumbency against the party in Haryana. The BJP had dropped nine and seven incumbent MLAs from the first and the second list respectively for Haryana.
The BJP accommodated turncoats from the ranks of the Jannayak Janata Party (JJP) of Dushyant Chautala in the list of candidates for the Assembly polls. The BJP’s bid to borrow strength from the JJP also helped the party beat the anti-incumbency in Haryana.
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