Khattar fails to unite non-Jat, urban voters

Pradeep Sharma
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, October 24

The failure of the ruling BJP to consolidate non-Jat votes and the dominant Jat community hitting back at the saffron party have accounted for the “below par” performance of the BJP in the Haryana Assembly elections.

This coupled with a low voter turnout in the urban areas, considered to be the stronghold of the BJP, its failure to polarise the non-Jat urban voters and the dominance of local issues as against the party’s national narrative centred around abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir, have contributed to a “hung Assembly” in the state.

However, the biggest takeaway from the election results is that the influential Jats, which constitute around 25% of the total electorate, delivered a big blow to the BJP government, led by a non-Jat Chief Minister Manohar Lak Khattar, especially in the rural Assembly segments.

Riding high on the “Modi wave” and polarisation of non-Jat and urban votes, the BJP had formed the first government in the state in the 2014 Assembly elections.

This time around, the party has failed to consolidate the non-Jat vote bank to put itself in a winning position. Since the rural Assembly segments, which have a sizeable Jat vote bank, accounted for heavy voting, the BJP remained at a disadvantage as compared to the Opposition parties in the rural segments.

In fact, two Jat leaders, Bhupinder Singh Hooda (Congress) and Dushyant Chautala (JJP), who single-handedly led the election campaigns of their respective parties as against an array of star campaigners of the BJP, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, have managed to pocket nearly half of the 90 seats.

While Hooda is considered to be the tallest Jat leader in the state, Dushyant’s JJP has made major inroads into the vote bank of its parent organisation INLD comprising rural Jat peasantry. In fact, this is being reflected in the election results in the constituencies which have sizeable Jat voters as the Congress and the JJP have been able to win a majority of these seats.