Chandigarh, June 18
In a major political development in Haryana, the BSP and the Haryana Janhit Congress joined hands today for the forthcoming Assembly elections and the Lok Sabha elections to be held in 2014. The announcement came after a meeting between BSP supremo Mayawati and HJC leaders - former Haryana Chief Minister Bhajan Lal and his younger son Kuldeep Bishnoi - in Lucknow. The father-son duo had specially flown to the UP capital for the meeting.
The two parties were under pressure from their respective cadres for the alliance after the Lok Sabha elections. According to the settlement, the HJC will contest 50 of the 90 Assembly seats in Haryana, leaving the rest for the BSP. In the next Lok Sabha elections, the BSP will contest six seats, while the HJC will contest the remaining four.
The Chief Minister candidate of the alliance will be Bishnoi, while the BSP will take the post of Deputy Chief Minister, who will be a member of the Scheduled Castes.
According to sources, BSP general secretary in charge of Haryana Man Singh Manhera had met Mayawati a few days ago and had conveyed to her that the party must enter into an alliance in Haryana if it wanted to stop the Congress from forming the government after the next Assembly poll.
The BSP was also approached by the INLD for an alliance. According to the INLD formula, the next Assembly elections should have been contested by the INLD, the BJP and the BSP jointly.
However, Mayawati preferred Bhajan Lal over Om Prakash Chautala. Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda has described the BSP-HJC alliance as “zero plus zero is equal to zero”.
The immediate gain for the two parties will be a check in the erosion of their cadre. It is more so in case of the HJC, which had witnessed a revolt by its two senior members, Subhash Batra and Krishan Murti Hooda, both former ministers, recently. They expelled Bishnoi from the party and proclaimed Batra as the HJC’s new chief. There were signs that more of its leaders might cross over to the Congress or the Batra faction. The alliance may put a stop on this exodus.
