The BJP, which is currently in power in Haryana, took a daring step just days before the polls were declared. It ended its alliance with the JJP, removed Manohar Lal Khattar as chief minister, and demonstrated its majority in the legislature through a trust vote. The new chief minister is Nayab Singh Saini, president of the state unit.
A few months before the assembly elections, the BJP may have sought to introduce a new leader following the two Khattar administrations.
However, the action is also perceived as an effort to unite the non-Jat votes in Haryana for the state’s legislative elections, which will take place on May 25 during the sixth round of voting.
Mr Saini is from the Other Backward Class community and will help in the consolidation of the non-Jat vote in the state.
Simultaneously, the BJP has ditched the Jannayak Janta Party, which came to its rescue when it failed to win a majority in the Vidhan Sabha after the 2019 assembly polls.
Earlier that year, the BJP had won all 10 Lok Sabha seats in Haryana. Particularly after the recent moves, the party is aiming for a repeat performance.
Routed in the last general election, the Congress is the main opposition to the BJP in the state. In a seat-sharing arrangement with the Aam Aadmi Party, the Congress is fighting nine seats in the state, leaving Kurukshetra for the AAP.
The JJP and its parent party, the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD), too are in the fray. Both woo the Jat vote.
The BJP will look to cash in on the “clean image” and “transparent administration” provided by previous chief minister Khattar, and highlight the work done by the BJP governments at the Centre and in the state over the past decade.
The Congress is counting on the anti-incumbency factor, somewhat mitigated by the change of CM’s.
It will also bank on the popularity of state leaders like former state chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, Randeep Singh Surjewala and Kumari Selja.
In 2019, among the major upsets for the Congress was Mr Hooda’s defeat to BJP’s Ramesh Chander Kaushik from Sonipat. The party also lost Rohtak, the only seat it had won in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
Over the years, the BJP has been trying to make inroads in the Jat-dominated Deswali belt which also comprises the Sonipat and Rohtak regions.
In 2014, the BJP won seven of the eight seats it contested, while the INLD won two and the Congress one – a less one-sided affair than the 2019 polls.
The BJP’s Sunita Duggal was the lone woman to win in 2019, defeating Ashok Tanwar, the then Haryana Congress chief from the Sirsa reserved seat. Mr Tanwar joined the BJP in January this year after leaving the AAP.
In the outgoing Lok Sabha, the prominent faces among the BJP’s 10 Haryana MPs include Union ministers Rao Inderjit Singh (Gurugram), Krishan Pal (Faridabad) and Nayab Singh Saini (Kurukshetra).
The Ambala seat fell vacant last year after the death of Rattan Lal Kataria.
Members of key Congress families fell during the 2019 sweep by the BJP. While Mr Hooda lost in Sonipat, Shruti Choudhary, who is the granddaughter of former chief minister Bansi Lal, lost from Bhiwani-Mahendergarh.
Bhavya Bishnoi, the grandson of former chief minister Bhajan Lal, lost in Hisar as the BJP conquered the traditional strongholds of the Congress. Bishnoi is now with the BJP and an MLA from the Adampur assembly segment.
Devi Lal’s great-grandson, Dushyant Chautala of the JJP, was defeated in 2019 by Brijendra Singh of the BJP, a former bureaucrat turned politician and the son of former Union minister Birender Singh. Recently, Brijendra Singh joined the Congress.
In the 2019 parliamentary elections, the AAP and the Jannayak Janata Party formed an alliance. The AAP attempted to fight three seats but was unsuccessful.
In the most recent parliamentary election, the BJP received 58% of the vote while the Congress received 28%. With less than two percent of the vote, the INLD was crushed. At that time, the AAP had only won roughly one-third of a percentage point.
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