Haryana polls: JJP, Azad’s party join hands with 70-20 seat-sharing deal

The Jannayak Janta Party (JJP) and the Azad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram) have joined hands for the Haryana Assembly polls on October 1.

Of the 90 seats, Dushyant Chautala’s JJP, an offshoot of the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD), will contest 70 seats while Chandra Shekhar Azad’s party will fight the remaining.

Dushyant announced the alliance in Delhi on Tuesday (August 27). Both Dushyant and Azad promised to fight for the rights and welfare of farmers and form a “government of the youth”.

JJP’s setback

In a setback to the JJP ahead of the Assembly elections, four of its legislators resigned from all party positions and their primary memberships on Saturday.

The four MLAs are former minister Anoop Dhanak, Devender Babli, Ram Karan Kala, and Ishwar Singh. They have resigned citing personal reasons. Ram Kumar Gautam was the first MLA to resign from the party.

Now, only three legislators are left in the party. They are Naina Chautala (Dushyant’s mother), MLA from the Badhra segment in Bhiwani district; Dushyant, MLA from Uchana Kalan in Jind, and Amarjeet Dhanda, MLA from the Julana segment in Jind.

Other MLAs Ram Niwas Suraj Khera and Jogi Ram Singh have been facing disqualification charges.

Confident BJP

Former state home minister Anil Vij on Monday claimed victory of the BJP in the forthcoming polls, saying the regional parties were “now finished” and the contest was “only with the Congress”. “We will easily defeat the Congress because they have committed so many sins,” he claimed.

In October 2019, the BJP, which won 40 seats and was six short of a majority in the 90-member Assembly, formed the government in alliance with the then newly-formed JJP led by Dushyant, who was Manohar Lal Khattar’s deputy in the government.

In March, the new government was formed under the helm of Nayab Singh Saini after the BJP severed its four-and-a-half-year-old ties with the JJP.

Saini succeeded Khattar, who is now a Union minister.

Fading legacy

Interestingly, the legacy of former deputy prime minister and the state’s tallest Jat leader, Chaudhary Devi Lal, who, with his family, ruled the state’s dusty and defection-ridden politics for decades, is shrinking owing to a family feud.

After the feud within the INLD, five-time chief minister OP Chautala’s grandson Dushyant split the party vertically in 2018 and formed the JJP.

In Haryana, both regional outfits — the INLD and the fledgling JJP — bank heavily on their traditional Jat votes, comprising 28 per cent of the state’s population.

Vote equations

This time, their “sinking ships” face a tough contest from the Congress, led by prominent Jat leader and two-time chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda.

However, the BJP is banking on non-Jat votes.

The INLD is banking more on its patriarch OP Chautala, who was released from Tihar Jail on July 2, 2021 after serving nine and a half years of a 10-year prison sentence.

The BJP, which is in power in the state, is eyeing a third-consecutive term in the polls. The votes will be counted on October 4.

(With agency inputs)