Haryana polls: 4 factors that may have upset Congress’s apple cart

The pollsters got it wrong again. The Congress’s internal calculations and feedback seem to have got it wrong too. Despite riding high on an anti-incumbency wave, farmers’ protests, wrestlers’ protests, and the Agnipath fiasco, the Grand Old Party seems to have lost the Haryana game.

By 2.30 pm on Tuesday (October 8), the Congress was leading in 33 seats and had five in its kitty, while the BJP, with 44 leads and three seats, looked set to retain Haryana for the third consecutive term, reversing all exit poll predictions that favoured an overwhelming Congress win.

So, what went so horribly wrong for the Congress despite its winning five of the 10 Lok Sabha seats earlier this year in a strong comeback? Here are some probable factors:

Infighting

If the Congress suffered from infighting, so did the BJP. But it seems to have cost the Congress dearer than the saffron party. Even as local Congress leaders sniffed victory — which proved to be overconfidence — there was a scramble for the chief minister’s seat.

The spat between Congress veterans Bhupinder Singh Hooda and Kumari Selja particularly drew attention, with the BJP even sending feelers to the latter that she was welcome into the party. A miffed Selja even skipped the manifesto launch and stayed away from campaigning for the most part. However, a tete-a-tete with the party top brass pacified Selja to an extent.

Also read: BJP puts on brave face as exit polls predict rout in Haryana election

Nevertheless, the split in the party was very evident in the run-up to the elections, with the Congress heavily banking on and backing the Jat leader Hooda, antagonising the Dalit leader Selja and fellow senior leader Randeep Surjewala. Another anti-Hooda camp leader Kiran Choudhry left the party and joined the BJP.

The Congress’s one-sided support seems to have backfired.

Caste calculations gone wrong

That brings us to the next point. The free hand given to Hooda — in deciding almost everything, from candidates to alliances — definitely did not work for the Congress.

The anti-Hooda camp in the party have claimed that he pocketed the lion’s share of the tickets for his fellow Jat candidates, leaving Selja high and dry. While the party fielded some 70 candidates backed by the Hooda camp, Selja could bag a mere nine tickets for her Dalit loyalists.

This came at a time when the Dalits and non-Jats were leaning towards the Congress instead of the BJP, which rose to power in Haryana mainly with the backing of non-Jat communities. However, Congress’s clear backing for the Jats — who constitute some 26–28 per cent of Haryana’s population — and its sidelining of the Dalit leader Selja pushed those two communities away.

There seems to have been a consolidation of non-Jat votes in favour of the BJP, whose candidate list was dominated by OBC and Brahmin candidates.

Also read: Why a Haryana win could give BJP a solid edge against JMM in Jharkhand

Lack of all-round focus

While focusing overwhelmingly on the Jats and the central Haryana region where the community dominates, the Congress neglected the Ahirwal region in the south. The Ahirwal belt, comprising Gurgaon, Mahendergarh, and Rewari, has remained loyal to the BJP since 2014.

The BJP, on the other hand, focused on both urban and rural constituencies, as well as all non-Jat communities. The RSS worked hard at the grassroots, in the process denting the Congress’s rural voter base, which has helped the Congress improve its performance in the Lok Sabha polls.

The saffron party already had a firm control over the urban voter base in areas such as Gurgaon and Faridabad. Its all-round focus compared to the Congress seems to have done the trick for the BJP.

Smaller players ruin the party

The Congress and the BJP are neck and neck in terms of vote share; in fact, the Congress has a marginally better share than the saffron party. However, the Congress has not been able to convert the vote share into seats.

Also read: Haryana CM Saini: BJP will form govt, Congress will blame EVMs

While smaller players such as the INLD and the BSP are leading in one seat each and so are three Independents, Dushyant Chautala’s Jannayak Janta Party (JJP), which had won 10 seats in 2019, has failed to score. However, these players may have eaten into the Congress’s share of the anti-incumbency votes, benefiting the BJP in the process.