Results of the Haryana election have surprised all political observers and defied almost all field reports and opinion and exit polls. For the third consecutive time, the BJP has succeeded in winning Haryana, this time even bettering its 2014 and 2019 records and also the most recent 2024 Lok Sabha elections performance. The Congress has called the results 'counter-intuitive' and 'unacceptable' and raised several serious issues with the Election Commission, questioning various irregularities and complaining of administrative manipulation. The Jammu and Kashmir outcome of course turned out to be more on predicted lines with the NC-INC alliance just crossing the halfway mark. But it is the loss in Haryana which will definitely go down as yet another missed opportunity for the Congress. Coupled with the poor Congress performance in Jammu, the Haryana defeat will once again be seen as a sign of the continuing vulnerability of the Congress in an independent bipolar contest against the BJP in North India.
While the discussion in the media will obviously focus on the Haryana outcome, J&K should merit no less attention. The intensified assault on the constitutionally enshrined structure of parliamentary democracy and federal framework had begun with the demolition of Jammu and Kashmir's constitutional status. A state was overnight bifurcated into two union territories and amidst complete internet shutdown almost the entire opposition was subjected to incarceration or house arrest. With democracy in suspension, major changes in the electoral map were carried out through delimitation. The number of seats in J&K was raised from 83 to 90, six of these seven added seats being in Jammu, bringing Jammu with 43 seats almost at par with the valley with 47 seats. This was in brazen contrast to the population share of the two regions - 43.6% for Jammu as compared to 56.4% for the valley. The SC/ST categories were also reconstituted to accommodate more sections and create favourable constituencies for the BJP. On top of it, the LG was given the discretionary power to nominate as many as five MLAs.
The J&K outcome must be seen against this backdrop of fascist assault and sinister subversion. Indeed, as far as the Kashmir valley is concerned the vote must be seen as an emphatic protest vote to teach not just the BJP but even its erstwhile ally PDP a lesson and defeat the BJP-sponsored strategy of fragmentation of the anti-BJP vote. The anger against the snatching of statehood has certainly not been limited to the valley. We can see deep disenchantment in Ladakh - both in Leh and Kargil - which became manifest yet again in the climate march from Leh to Delhi coinciding with the J&K elections. A more energetic and determined campaign in Jammu could possibly channelise the discontent in Jammu too against the BJP's divisive anti-federal agenda, but the Congress clearly lacked that kind of effort or organisation. On the contrary, the Congress showed little concern for electoral ethics when it fielded Chaudhary Lal Singh, the infamous defender of the accused in the brutal rape and murder of Asifa, first in the LS elections from Udhampur and then yet again from the Basholi segment in the Assembly elections.
In Haryana, the Congress was expected to win the elections riding on ten years of accumulated anti-incumbency of the BJP government and especially the palpable mass anger in Haryana against the farm laws, Agnipath scheme in the Army and the treatment meted out to women wrestlers. This anti-incumbency was surely real, as the BJP first replaced the highly unpopular CM Manoharlal Khattar with Nayab Singh Saini before the Lok Sabha elections, denied tickets to a few ministers and as many as eight ministers and the Speaker lost the Assembly elections. But the Lok Sabha elections were indications enough that anti-incumbency was not a sufficient factor for a decisive victory over the BJP. By bringing in Nayab Saini as the CM, the BJP had not only defused the anti-incumbency factor but also consolidated the OBC constituency and widened the social fault line against the traditional Jat domination in the state. The BJP succeeded in saving five of the ten LS seats from Haryana which translated into BJP lead over 44 Assembly seats, ahead of the Congress lead in 42 seats with the AAP, an ally of the Congress in the LS elections leading in the remaining 4 segments.
The Congress did not seem to have drawn sufficient lessons from the Lok Sabha election experience. As a result, the Congress failed yet again to cross the halfway mark in spite of an 11% increase in vote share (from 28.08 percent to 39.09 percent) and an improvement in seat tally from 31 to 37. The BJP strategy of combining aggressive anti-Muslim hate campaign with non-Jat SC-OBC polarisation once again managed to keep the anti-incumbency factor in check. Nayab Singh Saini's blatant defence of cow vigilantism and the targeted announcement of SC/ST sub-quota following the Supreme Court's controversial sub-classification verdict was an unmistakable sign of the BJP strategy. In spite of having a Dalit state president (who incidentally lost in these Assembly elections) and a prominent Dalit parliamentarian in Kumari Selja, the Congress failed to effectively counter the BJP's SC-OBC outreach. The 28 seats in Haryana's OBC-dominated Ahirwal region (Gurgaon, Rewari, Faridabad and Bhiwani-Mahendergarh LS seats) bordering Rajasthan sealed the fate of the Congress even as the party had forged ahead in the remaining 62 seats of Haryana.
The BJP will definitely try to use the unexpected gains made in Haryana to bolster its campaign in the forthcoming Assembly elections in Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Delhi and Bihar. But the 2024 Lok Sabha elections clearly showed that the BJP's stunning victories in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh in the late 2023 Assembly elections did not stop it from suffering major electoral blows in states like Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan only a few months later. The forces of people's movements and parties of the INDIA bloc must earnestly prepare to give the Modi government and the Sangh brigade a decisive rebuff in the next round of Assembly elections in Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Delhi and Bihar.
