A setback to Modi-Shah’s
politics of belligerence
N D Sharma
New turn to Haryana politics
In Haryana the post-election politics has taken an interesting turn.
Founder-president of the Jannayak Janta Party (JJP) Dushyant Chautala
has agreed to help the BJP form the government in lieu of the post of
Deputy Chief Minister for himself and a few berths for his MLAs in the
Council of Ministers. The BJP had to accept this humiliating condition
because it has only 40 MLAs in a House of 90. First it tried to strike a deal
with the seven independent MLAs (at least five of them being rebel BJP
men) and the lone Haryana Lokhit Party MLA Gopal Goyal Kanda.
However, Kanda’s very name soon put the BJP on the back-foot as some
of its own leaders strongly protested any connection with Kanda because
of his criminal background. The party then turned to the JJP which has 10
MLAs.
BJP’s Manohar Lal Khattar with JJP’s Dushyant Chautala in New Delhi
After being elected Leader of the JJP Legislature Party, Dushyant
Chautala went to Tihar jail (in Delhi) to meet his father Ajay Chautala who
is undergoing a sentence of 10-years’ imprisonment for his role in the
teachers’ recruitment scam. Soon thereafter, he decided to go with the
BJP, whose election
manifesto he had ridiculed
and called it “Jumla Patra”.
He said then: “as many as 75
promises the BJP had made
earlier remain unfulfilled
and many of these have now
been included by the party in
its election manifesto which
is just a Jumla Patra”. As part
of the BJP government, he
will have to implement this
Jumla Patra now.
Besides, it will be
interesting to see how much
of his own election promises
he can get implemented. The JJP’s main promises included 75 per cent of
the jobs to be reserved for the local youth, monthly assistance of Rs
11,000 to the unemployed youth, extra ten marks to students from the
rural areas when they appear in competitive examinations in the State, a
bonus of 10 per cent or Rs 100 over minimum support price (MSP) to
farmers, closure of liquor vends within village limits and changes in the
Motor Vehicle Act to substantially reduce the fine amounts. Another
important promise made by Chautala is appointment of only Haryana
domiciled people as chairpersons of boards, corporations, OSDs as well
as Vice-Chancellors and Registrars of the universities in the State.
The BJP may also face intra-party problems as Chautala’s party has
been responsible for their defeat at the hustings. Chautala himself has a
long-standing feud with the family of the BJP’s Rajya Sabha member
Birender Singh.
The Maharashtra and
Haryana Assembly
election results provide
a hope of Opposition’s
revival by giving a
setback to the politics of
belligerence being consistently
pursued by Prime Minister
Narendra Modi and Home Minister
Amit Shah.
The results also show that the
voters have registered their partial
disapproval of the Centre’s Kashmir
policy. Both the Prime Minister and
the Home Minister (who is also the
president of the BJP) had appealed
to the voters to renew their
mandate for the BJP governments
in the two States because the party
at the Centre had done away with
the Article 370 (granting special
status to Jammu and Kashmir),
implemented National Register of
Citizens (NRC) in Assam, promised
NRC all over the country and was
engaged in teaching a lesson to
Pakistan.
The immediate problems of the
people like unemployment, growing
joblessness following shutdown of
industrial units, farmers’ suicides and
crisis in agricultural sector were
conveniently ignored. Both Prime
Minister Modi and Home Minister
Shah had vigorously campaigned in
the two States. Also were engaged in
masked campaigning for the ruling
party the CBI, the ED and the Army
top brass.
After the strike on terrorist
camps inside PoK on the eve of
polling, it was the Chief of Army
Staff General Bipin Rawat who had
briefed the press, as he had done in
late September by telling media
persons that Balakot had been
reactivated by Pakistan.
The BJP leaders and
spokespersons maintained
strategic silence. General Rawat has
a penchant for making politically
loaded statements. He has given
perhaps more public statements
than all the combined public
statements made by all the
previous Army Chiefs.
Shah had practically turned the
Assembly elections into a
referendum on abrogation of
Article 370.
He was quoted as having told a
rally in Mumbai: “I will tell the
people of Maharashtra, you have
an opportunity to make it clear if
you are in favour of those who
abrogated Article 370, or those who
opposed it. This is the first election
after the scrapping of Article 370.”
The people in Maharashtra, and
also elsewhere, have replied
through the ballot that they are not
all in favour of those who
abrogated Article 370. The BJP tally
in Maharashtra has come down to
105 from 122 in the outgoing
Assembly which has a strength of
288. Its ally Shiv Sena also will have
only 56 members in the new
Assembly whereas it had 63 in the
outgoing House. It is to be noted
that both BJP and Shiv Sena had
contested the Assembly elections in
2014 separately. In 2014, Shiv Sena
contested on 282 seats and BJP on
260. This time they did it jointly after entering into a pre-election
alliance. The Shiv Sena accepted
the BJP’s offer of 126 seats, the BJP
contested on 144 seats. The
remaining 18 seats were left for
other alliance partners. For the first
time the Maharashtra Assembly will
have a member of the Thackeray
dynasty with Shiv Sena founder
Bala Saheb Thackeray’s grandson
Aditya Thackeray having won from
Worli constituency.
If the voters decided to
puncture the kingsized ego of Narendra
Modi, it was in spite of
a fractured Opposition.
The Indian National
Lok Dal (INLD) had
emerged as the second
largest party in 2014
with 19 MLAs. Formed
by former Deputy
Prime Minister Devi Lal,
INLD succumbed to
family feuds, with Devi
Lal’s grandson
Dushyant Chautala
splitting the INLD and
forming his Jannayak
Janta Party (JJP). Most
of MLAs and prominent
leaders of the INLD
joined the BJP. It could
win only one seat this
time.
Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray with son Aaditya
Maharastra CM Devendra Fadnavis at BJP head office after elctions result
To woo the large number of
migrants from Hindi speaking
regions residing mostly in and
around Mumbai, the BJP had specially invited well-known party
leaders from the Hindi belt,
including Defence Minister Rajnath
Singh and Uttar Pradesh Chief
Minister Yogi Adityanath, to
address poll rallies. Others included Manoj Tiwari, Ravi
Kishan, Jagdambika Pal, and popular
Bhojpuri actor Nirahua, UP Deputy
Chief Minister Keshav Prasad
Maurya, who was appointed Joint Incharge of Maharashtra elections,
camped in Mumbai for over two
months to coordinate rallies where
north Indians were main speakers.
The ruling BJP received a greater
drubbing in Haryana where Prime
Minister Modi, Home Minister Shah
and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh
had spent relatively more time in
campaigning. There, too, they
harped mainly on issues unrelated
to the immediate problems of the
people of the State.
So confident was Amit Shah of
getting the Haryana people’s
support for the Centre’s policy on
Kashmir and engagement in
skirmishes with Pakistan that he
had aimed his target at 75 plus
seats in a House of 90. Chief
Minister Manohar Lal Khattar
promised implementation of NRC
in Haryana. The voters were apparently not amused by their
hate-mongering antics and they
refused to give the BJP even a
simple majority. The BJP had won
47 seats in 2014, one more than the
absolute majority. This time its
number has been reduced to 40.
The poll outcome has put Dushyant Chautala in the driver's seat of Haryana politics.
If the voters decided to puncture
the king-sized ego of Narendra
Modi, it was in spite of a fractured
opposition. The Indian National Lok
Dal (INLD) had emerged as the
second largest party in 2014 with
19 MLAs. Formed by former Deputy
Prime Minister Devi Lal, INLD
succumbed to family feuds, with
Devi Lal’s grandson Dushyant
Chautala splitting the INLD and
forming his Jannayak Janta Party
(JJP). Most of MLAs and prominent
leaders of the INLD joined the BJP.
It could win only one seat this time.
JJP, the breakaway group of
Dushyant Chautala, however, was
able to get its ten candidates
elected which put him in a position
to play a crucial role in forming the
government in the State having a
hung Assembly.
The Congress was in no better
position. On the eve of the
Assembly elections, factionalism in
the party was at its peak. Ashok
Tanwar, who was president of
Haryana Pradesh Congress
Committee (PCC) for over five
years, was at constant loggerheads
with former Chief Minister
Bhupinder Singh Hooda who had
declared at a Jind rally that he
would be the candidate for Chief
Minister’s post in the ensuing
Assembly elections whether
Congress wanted it or not. After
Sonia Gandhi was made interim
president of Congress, she
appointed former Union Minister
and an SC leader Selja as the
Haryana PCC president and Hooda
as Leader of the Congress
Legislature Party.
Another disgruntled leader Kiran
Chaudhary was made head of the
Election Manifesto Committee.
Consequently, Ashok Tanwar left the Congress and announced that
he would work for defeating
Bhupinder Singh Hooda. Not only
was Congress in Haryana struggling
with internal dissidence, it was also
virtually abandoned by the party’s
central leadership.
It was announced that Sonia
Gandhi would address a poll rally in
Haryana but her programme was
cancelled at the eleventh hour.
Only Rahul Gandhi, who holds no
position in the party, addressed
two rallies in the State. No other
Congress leader went there; not
even Punjab Chief Minister Captain
Amarinder Singh even though there
is a sizeable population of Sikhs in
Haryana.
Still, the Congress has emerged
as the second largest party with 31
MLAs. In 2014, the Congress had
won on 15 seats only and was third
after INLD’s 19 MLAs.
While in Haryana the main contest
was between BJP and the Congress,
in Maharashtra, the BJP-Shiv Sena
combine had the Congress-NCP
alliance as its main adversary. In
Haryana the other parties in the fray
included fractured Indian National
Lok Dal (INLD), Jannayak Janta Party
or JJP (which was formed after a vertical split in INLD), BSP, AAP, and
Swaraj India Party. Only INLD or
what had remained of INLD after the
split could win on one seat. In
Maharashtra there were several
other parties also in the fray which
would barely make their presence felt in the Assembly.
Narendra Modi and Sonia Gandhi
The Central leadership of the
Congress had left Maharashtra also
to the local leaders who, too, were
not exactly working in harmony.
The Congress in Maharashtra
apparently benefited by aligning
with the Nationalist Congress Party
(NCP). NCP chief Sharad Pawar
worked real hard in spite of his
advanced age (he is nearly 80) and
not so good health. The case
registered by ED against Pawar
seemed to have galvanised the Maratha leader who impressed
both his supporters and critics alike
by holding election rallies even in
pouring rain. While the Congress
increased its tally from 42 in 2014
to 44 this time, NCP reached 54
from 41 in the outgoing House.
By-elections were held for
51 Assembly seats across
17 States. The BJP did not
fare according to its
expectations. Out of the
51, the BJP could win only
in 17 constituencies. The
Congress was victorious in
12, though it could not
win a seat in UP in spite of
efforts of Priyanka Gandhi
Vadra to rejuvenate the
party in the State.
A notable feature of the
Assembly elections was a
perceptible decline in the vote
share of the BJP from what it had
received in the Lok Sabha elections
held only a few months ago. In
Maharashtra, it came down from
27.8 per cent to 25.7 per cent, in
Haryana the decline was more steep --- from 59.7 per cent to 36.5
per cent. In Maharashtra, Shiv
Sena, too, lost its vote share
considerably.
The Opposition parties this time
did not fall in the Modi-Shah trap
by joining with them on the issues
like Article 370, Balakot, PoK
terrorist camps and NRC but
confined their campaign to the
issues directly affecting the people
of the two States. Corruption was
an important issue in the speeches
of the opposition leaders in both
the States. In Haryana, while Chief
Minister Manohar Lal Khattar won
comfortably, eight members of his
cabinet lost the election. Even the
State BJP chief Subhash Barala was
unable to win.
In Maharashtra also, more than
half a dozen ministers were unable
to return. Chief Minister Devendra
Fadnavis, however, won. Important
opposition leaders elected in
Maharashtra include PCC president
Balasaheb Thorat, former Chief
Minister Ashok Chavan and
Prithviraj Chavan of the Congress
and Ajit Pawar of NCP. In Haryana
former Chief Minister Bhupinder
Singh Hooda was elected but AICC
spokesperson Randeep Surjewala
lost by a small margin.
In the two Lok Sabha
constituencies where by-elections were held, the Samastipur seat was
won by NDA’s ally Lok Janshakti
Party (LJP) while Satara in
Maharashtra returned the NCP
candidate.
Interestingly, Satara seat was held
by Shivaji’s descendant Udayanraje
Bhosale who had won on NCP ticket
in the general elections for the Lok
Sabha. On the eve of Assembly
elections he resigned from NCP and
Lok Sabha and joined BJP. During the
campaign for Assembly elections in
Maharashtra, Prime Minister Modi
had exploited to the fill ‘Shivaji’s
descendant’s having joined the BJP’.
Apparently it did not help. In the byelection, the BJP fielded him from
Satara itself but he lost.
By-elections were also held for
51 Assembly seats across 17 States.
There also the BJP did not fare
according to its expectations. Out
of the 51, the BJP could win only in
17 constituencies. The Congress
was victorious in 12, though it
could not win a seat in UP in spite
of efforts of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra
to rejuvenate the party in the State.
Notable among the Congress gains
is the victory of Kantilal Bhuria
from Jhabua seat in Madhya
Pradesh. Jhabua seat was held by G
S Damor of BJP. He resigned after
his election to Lok Sabha.
The BJP had fielded young party
leader Bhanu Bhuria in the byelection. BJP leaders, notably
Leader of Opposition in the
Assembly Gopal Bhargava and
loud-mouthed BJP General
Secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya, had
told the Jhabua electorate during
the campaign that the victory of the
BJP candidate would result in the
return of the BJP government in the
State. Bhargava had gone to the
extent of declaring that the BJP
government headed by Shivraj
Singh Chouhan would replace the
present Congress government of
Kamal Nath if the BJP candidate
won. Bad luck of Gopal Bhargava.
The BJP candidate lost by around
28,000 votes.