At a meeting of BJP and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leaders at Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar’s Chandigarh residence Tuesday, the utility of the alliance with the JJP came up for discussions, sources present at the meeting told ThePrint. Khattar’s meeting with Governor Bandaru Dattatreya Wednesday only added grist to the rumour mill.
“Party leaders touched on the issue of the utility of BJP’s alliance with the JJP after the results of the five states. Some leaders were also of the view that the time has come to give a rethink to the alliance. However, Khattar didn’t give his views on the issue,” a source privy to the conversation informed The Print.
BJP’s Haryana in-charge Biplab Kumar Deb, state party chief Nayab Singh Saini, national secretary O.P. Dhankar, Haryana RSS Sanghchalak (Haryana head) Pawan Jindal, and party’s organising secretary Phanindranath Sharma were among those present in the meeting.
Its objective, according to the BJP source, was to discuss preparations for parliamentary polls due in May, and to gauge the BJP’s readiness in case the assembly polls due in October next year are preponed and held simultaneously with the Lok Sabha election.
According to the source, the leaders who want the alliance to end were of the view that, with the elections drawing nearer, party leaders in certain parliamentary segments — particularly the ones JJP ministers come from — are at a disadvantage and are unable to make the “desired impact” on the people.
This appears particularly true for the seats where the BJP and the JJP have competing interests, the source said.
ThePrint reached JJP chief Dushyant Chautala through calls and WhatsApp for comment. This report will be updated if and when a response is received.
Political observers believe that, given the circumstances, it suits the BJP’s interests to contest the polls without the JJP, and then opt for a post-election tie-up if needed.
Several BJP leaders have already hinted that the party isn’t keen on a pre-poll alliance and only allied with the JJP last election to form the government, political analyst Hemant Atri told ThePrint.
As things stand, the BJP is comfortable in the 90-member Haryana assembly even without JJP’s 10 MLAs — Khattar’s party has 41 seats and support from six of the seven Independents. Besides these, the party also reportedly has the support of Sirsa MLA and Haryana Lokhit Party chief Gopal Kanda — a leader it has so far kept at an arm’s length because of the abetment of suicide charges against him.
In July, Kanda was acquitted in the 2012 suicide case of air hostess Geetika Sharma.
“So, if the BJP is to contest the upcoming parliamentary polls alone, as its senior leaders — including Union Home Minister Amit Shah — have hinted, the party will have to decide on when to end the alliance,” Atri told ThePrint.
Praveen Attrey, media secretary to the Khattar government, said that the BJP’s alliance with the JJP was a post-poll deal finalised “solely to run the government for five years” because the BJP failed to get a majority in the 2019 assembly polls.
In that election, the BJP had secured 40 seats, emerging as the single largest party but falling six short of the halfway mark needed to form the government. The JJP, with whom it finally allied, had won 10 seats.
“Now, whether this alliance is to be continued for the next election, or if this is to be ended, at what stage it is to be ended, is entirely at the will of the central leadership of the party,” Attrey told ThePrint.
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‘BJP consolidating non-Jat votes’
There are several seats where the interests of senior BJP and the JJP leaders clash. One instance is Uchana Kalan, a seat that Dushyant represents. In 2019, he beat the then-sitting MLA Prem Lata, wife of former Union Minister Birender Singh, by nearly 50,000 votes.
Another bone of contention between the two parties is the Hisar parliamentary seat, which Birender Singh’s son Brijendra Singh currently represents. Dushyant held this seat between 2014 and 2019 and has voiced his interest in it.
Another example is Tohana in Fatehabad, a seat currently represented by JJP minister Devender Singh Babli, who, in 2019, beat sitting MLA Subhash Barala — former state BJP chief and a Khattar loyalist — by over 50,000 votes.
Both the BJP and the JJP have said that they are preparing to contest all 10 of Haryana’s parliamentary seats.
As far as the assembly election is concerned, of the six Independents supporting the Khattar government, Ranjit Singh, an MLA from Rania assembly segment, is a minister in Haryana cabinet, while Dharam Pal Gonder from Nilokheri, Rakesh Daultabad from Badshahpur, and Nayan Pal Rawat from Pirthala are chairmen of various state boards and corporations.
On Monday — a day after the BJP’s resounding victory in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan — Khattar had exuded confidence the party would win both parliamentary and assembly elections in the state.
“A hat-trick of victories has been achieved in the elections of three states by Prime Minister Shri @narendramodi ji. A hat-trick will also be repeated in the Lok Sabha elections to be held in May next year and after four months, another hat-trick will be taken in the Haryana Assembly elections with the blessings of the people of the state,” Khattar wrote on X Monday.
जीत की एक हैट्रिक तीन राज्यों के चुनावों में लगी है, एक हैट्रिक प्रधानमंत्री श्री @narendramodi जी अगले वर्ष मई में होने वाले लोकसभा चुनाव में लगाएंगे और उसके चार महीने बाद एक और हैट्रिक प्रदेश की जनता के आशीर्वाद से हरियाणा विधानसभा चुनाव में भी लगेगी। pic.twitter.com/3qtdg7qGLx
— Manohar Lal (@mlkhattar) December 4, 2023
Senior BJP leader Chaudhary Birender Singh told ThePrint that the JJP’s poor performance in the Rajasthan assembly polls has proved what he always maintained — that the BJP won’t gain anything by continuing the alliance. At a public meeting in Jind, the Jat leader had warned that he would quit the BJP if it continued its alliance with Chautala and his JJP.
“When he (Chautala) came up with his new party in 2019, people thought an angel had descended from the skies, and as if he was the incarnation of Chaudhary Devi Lal (former Haryana CM and Chautala’s great-grandfather). But in these four years, people have understood that the way they were cheated had never happened in the state’s history,” Singh had said then, without taking any names.
“The sooner the BJP gets rid of the JJP, the better it is for the party,” the leader, who was a Union minister between 2014 and 2019, told ThePrint after Sunday’s results.
Political analyst Hemant Atri believes that as a strategy, the BJP doesn’t enter into a pre-poll alliance, particularly when it comes to the Hindi belt. Moreover, the BJP appears to be focusing on consolidating non-Jat votes in Haryana, he said.
Jats are estimated to form 22-23 percent of the state’s population and hold significant sway over its politics.
“The manner in which the BJP replaced its Jat state present O.P. Dhankar with OBC leader Nayab Singh Saini ahead of the next year’s polls, it’s evident that the party aims at consolidating non-Jat votes. Under these circumstances, a JJP contesting alone suits BJP more than contesting in alliance with it, because outside the alliance, the JJP will cut into the Jat votes of the Congress and INLD,” Atri said.
The BJP could opt for a post-poll alliance with either the JJP or the Indian National Lok Dal — the party from which Chautala broke away in 2019 — Atri further said. “It (the BJP) can also get support from the Independents.”
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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