Haryana poll results: How independents, AAP, BSP damaged Congress's chances

Would the Haryana results have panned out favourably for the Congress party, as most had predicted, had the party managed to rein in dissidents who entered the poll fray as independents, decided to adopt the BJP’s strategy of dropping unpopular incumbent MLAs, kept INDIA bloc partner AAP and, more importantly, its own Dalit face, Sirsa MP Kumari Selja, in good humour.

The Tuesday election results that paved the way for BJP’s return to power for an unprecedented third consecutive term in Haryana with its best-ever tally of 48 seats against the Congress’s 37 seats have left many wondering what went wrong for the Congress. Riding on a palpable anti-incumbency sentiment and years of dramatic protests against the ruling BJP by farmers, Jats, unemployed youth and women wrestlers, the Grand Old Party had been confident of a landslide victory in the northern state. Every Exit Poll too had predicted an imminent majority for the Congress.

What led to BJP's stunning victory

Yet, as the election results poured in on October 8, Congress members and political observers, even many within the BJP, were left bewildered over what was unfolding. The Congress’s central leadership, of course, has called the unexpected results a “defeat for democracy” and “victory of the system”, alleging that the electoral apparatus had been compromised at the behest of the BJP.

Also read: Congress stares at seat-sharing hiccups after drubbing in Haryana, Jammu

Over the next few days, the Congress says it will analyse the results to understand what went wrong for it in Haryana. Many, including senior Congress leaders of the state, have already begun to blame the deep factional feuds within the party, particularly the acrimony between Jat stalwart and former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and Congress’s Sirsa MP and Dalit face, Kumari Selja, for the poll loss. Others have speculated that the BJP’s success in polarising the electorate along a Jat versus non-Jat binary as well as a split of the Dalit and Jat votes in some areas due to the Hooda-Selja turf war, stalled the Congress’s march past the victory line.

A closer constituency-wise look at the voting pattern for various candidates, however, also reveals a more interesting and, arguably, definitive explanation for the BJP’s stunning victory. It also gives the Congress reasons to re-think its oft-adopted strategy of renominating a bulk of its incumbent MLAs as nominees in a fresh election; something the BJP ruthlessly avoids even when there is an evident risk of rebellion.

Two clear indicators for Congress to analyse

There are two very clear indicators from Tuesday’s results that the Congress may want to analyse when it begins to review its poll performance.

First, renominating a bulk of incumbent MLAs as candidates, without a thorough appraisal of their performance as legislators over the past five years, may stem in rebellion from them but it could also trigger dissent from others who have been working in the field for the party while the sitting MLA was inaccessible to his constituents. Second, the party needs to understand that elections aren’t just about macro narratives but also about micro-management and it needs to assess not just the prospects of its principal rival in a constituency but also the damage that others entering the poll fray may cause to the victory prospects of its own candidate.

Also read: Haryana, J-K poll results: INDIA allies accuse Congress of arrogance

The Congress had chosen to renominate nearly all its leaders who had won the 2019 Haryana elections to contest the polls this time round. Party sources told The Federal that a majority of these MLAs were given party tickets at the behest of Bhupinder Singh Hooda, who eventually got the largest share of tickets – 72 out of 89 – for his loyalists compared to other party leaders such as Selja, Randeep Surjewala, Ajay Singh Yadav, Birender Singh and even the party high command.

A senior party leader who is also a member of the Congress’s central election committee, which screens potential candidates for any election told The Federal that internal surveys and other feedback received by the party had indicated that over a dozen of its incumbent MLAs could “lose the election due to anti-incumbency against them”. However, the party went ahead to renominate them as candidates anyway, either “under pressure from Hooda” or on the assurance that they would win despite anti-incumbency because the “overall mood in Haryana was strongly in favour of the Congress”.

That the party’s decision backfired spectacularly was evident in the results. As many as 16 incumbent MLAs of the party ended up losing the polls (See Table Below), including Rajinder Joon from Bahadurgarh who finished a distant third on his seat behind independent candidate and winner Rajesh Joon and the BJP’s Dinesh Kaushik. Sources said the party high command was repeatedly urged to field Rajesh Joon, who had been active in the constituency for the past five years and enjoyed high popularity, but eventually decided to repose faith in Rajinder Joon, the incumbent MLA.

16 sitting Congress MLAs who lost the polls:

Congress badly hit by independents

A senior Haryana Congress functionary told The Federal that the party was “so assured of a resounding victory in Haryana because of the anti-incumbency against BJP that it didn’t find it necessary to address the anti-incumbency against its own MLAs”. This functionary also added that “there was no doubt that the public mood was in our favour... of our 37 candidates who won, 23 are from seats we had not won in 2019; at least nine of these seats we had last won in 2005 while we also won some Assembly segments like Ratia, Narnaund and Hathin which the Congress had last won over 30 or more years ago. So, obviously this should make our leadership wonder why we couldn’t win those seats this time which we had won even in 2014 or 2019 when things were in the BJP’s favour”.

Also read: Rahul on Haryana poll rout: ‘Analysing unexpected results, will inform EC’

The constituency-wise results also bear out that the Congress was badly hit by the presence of independents in the fray, several of whom had rebelled against the party after being denied a ticket and others who, sources said, had been encouraged by different factional leaders of the party to enter the ring so that ‘loyalists’ of one satrap or the other doesn’t triumph.

The Congress’s inability to have an alliance with the AAP, which went on to field candidates across a bulk of Haryana’s seats, also damaged the party in some seats as AAP candidates chewed into the anti-BJP votes, reducing the Congress nominee’s vote-tally. The party high command’s failure to reassure Dalits who felt slighted by the sidelining of Selja in the poll campaign also seems to have pushed the community in a few constituencies to vote for Dalit leader Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which had tied up with Om Prakash and Abhay Chautala’s INLD for the elections. This split of Dalit votes also seems to have cost the Congress dear in a few seats.

As a result of the presence of independent candidates or nominees of the AAP and the BSP being in the poll fray, at least nine incumbent Congress MLAs failed to retain their seats (See Table Below). In all these nine seats the votes polled by the rebels/independents or those by the BSP or AAP nominee were higher than the Congress’s margin of defeat, slender in many constituencies.

Nine incumbent Congress MLAs who lost because of rebels/independents or presence of BSP, AAP candidates

Losing by slender margins

A similar pattern of Congress candidates losing their seats, often by slender margins, can be seen in nearly a dozen other Assembly segments where independents or a candidate from the BSP or AAP chipped away at the anti-BJP votes (See Table Below).

Congress insiders say in at least half a dozen such seats the independent candidate was, in fact, lobbying for a ticket from the party through one or other Congress satrap in Haryana.

In the Ambala Cantonment seat, for instance, independent candidate Chitra Sarwara had returned to the Congress in January this year “on the assurance that she will be given a ticket”, a senior party leader said. Ironically, Sarwara’s father, Nirmal Singh, was the Congress’s winning candidate from Ambala City on Tuesday; a constituency adjoining the Ambala Cantt seat that Sarwara was denied a ticket from because the party didn’t wish to accommodate both father-daughter in ticket distribution.

Sarwara decided to contest the polls as an independent anyway, sources say with the blessings of Bhupinder Hooda, and ended up at the second position behind BJP veteran Anil Vij polling an impressive 52,581 votes and pushing Selja loyalist Congress nominee Parvinder Pari, who secured a paltry 14,469 votes, to the third position.

Likewise, in the Ballabhgarh constituency, a senior AICC leader’s insistence for a ticket to Parag Sharma led to Sharda Rathore and Rao Ram Kumar, both lobbying for a party ticket, to enter the poll fray. Rathore and Kumar both polled more votes than Sharma, who secured just 8,674 votes and forfeited her deposit, while the BJP candidate Mool Chand Sharma emerged victorious.

12 other constituencies where independents/rebels or the presence of AAP, BSP hurt Congress

Vote share

The damage that the independents, BSP and AAP inflicted on the Congress is reflected in the division of vote share among various parties too. The Congress, with a 39.09 per cent vote share, was only marginally behind the BJP, which secured a vote share of 39.94 per cent.

A staggering 11 per cent of the vote share went into the kitty of independents who contested across the state’s Assembly segments, while the AAP and the BSP secured a vote share of 1.79 per cent and 1.82 per cent, respectively. If even less than half of the vote share staggered between the AAP, BSP and independents had come the Congress’s way, the Tuesday results would have been vastly different.