Gurugram: The Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) has entered into an alliance with Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) for the Haryana assembly elections scheduled for October.
INLD secretary general Abhay Singh Chautala met with Mayawati at her New Delhi residence to discuss the alliance Saturday. The two parties have been allied in the past, too.
Contacted by The Print Saturday, Chautala confirmed that the alliance between the two parties had been finalised, though the formal announcement will be made on 11 July.
“We will make a formal announcement of the alliance on 11 July in Chandigarh. Mayawati ji’s nephew Akash Anand will also be at the press conference to announce the alliance. The other details about tickets and seat-sharing will also be finalised in a meeting between the two parties that day,” Chautala said.
The two parties had contested the 2024 Lok Sabha polls separately in Haryana and fared very poorly.
The INLD contested seven seats in the state while the BSP fielded candidates in nine parliamentary constituencies.
The INLD’s vote share in Haryana in the general election was 1.74 percent, while the BSP had a vote share of 1.28 percent.
Chautala himself contested from Kurukshetra and polled 78,708 votes while Sandeep Lot Valmiki, the INLD’s candidate from Sirsa — the home district of the Chautala clan — polled the highest number of votes (92,453) among all INLD candidates.
Asked how he sees his party’s dismal performance in the Lok Sabha polls, Chautala said, “Assembly elections are different from the parliamentary polls. In the Lok Sabha polls, voters were divided between those who wanted to see Narendra Modi as the prime minister and those who wanted him to be ousted. Those who wanted him as prime minister for the third term voted for the BJP and those who did not want to see Modi as prime minister again voted for the INDIA bloc as that was the only alternative at the national level.”
The INDIA bloc is a thing of the past now and the INLD plans to align with a few more forces in Haryana to constitute a Mahagathbandhan ahead of the assembly elections, he said.
Asked who is expected to join, Chautala said he would reveal that at an appropriate time.
Also read: Eye on polls, CM Saini offers ‘sops’ to Haryana panchayat heads, sarpanches call it ‘eyewash’
INLD’s alliance with BSP, other parties in the past
In April 2018, the INLD entered into an alliance with the BSP ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha and assembly elections.
However, after a split in the INLD and the formation of the Jannayak Janta Party (JJP) by Chautala’s nephew, Dushyant, in December 2018, and the subsequent poor performance of the INLD in a by-election for the Jind assembly seat held in January 2019 — where INLD candidate Umed Singh Redu polled just 3,400 votes — the BSP called off the alliance.
Before this, the two parties came together in the 1998 Lok Sabha polls when the INLD contested from seven seats and the BSP from three in Haryana. The INLD won four out of seven seats. The victories included Sushil Kumar Indora from Sirsa, Kailasho Saini from Kurukshetra, Kishan Singh Sangwan from Sonipat and Surinder Singh Barwala from Hisar.
For the BSP, Aman Kumar Nagra won from the Ambala Lok Sabha seat.
The INLD also has a long history of alliances with the BJP before the latter became a force on its own in the state after 2014. In addition, it has contested a few assembly polls with the Shiromani Akali Dal under the leadership of the late Parkash Singh Badal.
Badal’s relations with INLD patriarch Devi Lal were more than just political — the two were referred to as “Pagree Watt Bhais” (brothers through exchange of turbans).
Till 2009, the Badal clan’s interest in Haryana was limited to Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) polls, an organisation responsible for managing Sikh places of worship in Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, and Chandigarh.
But after 2009, the Shiromani Akali Dal (Badal) [SAD (B)] began contesting Haryana assembly elections in alliance with the INLD.
In the 2009 assembly elections, the Punjab-based party fielded candidates in Kalanwali (Sirsa) and Ambala City, winning the Kalanwali seat with Charanjit Singh Rori as its candidate.
In the 2014 elections, Balkaur Singh became the SAD (B) MLA from Kalanwali. However, in the 2019 elections, its candidate, Rajinder Singh Desujodha, lost to the Congress’s Shishpal Keharwala.
(Edited by Radifah Kabir)
Also read: Days after lathicharge, Haryana sarpanches continue stir against e-tendering rule: ‘Won’t bow down’