Poll in mind, Haryana Deputy CM Dushyant Chautala meets JP Nadda on way ahead

Aditi Tandon

New Delhi, May 15

Haryana Deputy Chief Minister and senior Jannayak Janata Party (JJP) leader Dushyant Chautala here today met BJP president JP Nadda to discuss the political scenario in the state and the way forward for the alliance partners.

The meeting assumes significance given the fluidity surrounding the relationship between the ruling coalition partners in Haryana. “We discussed issues concerning future politics,” Dushyant said after the meeting, coming close on the heels of the BJP’s defeat in Karnataka and a month after the JJP leader said his party was preparing to contest all 10 Haryana Lok Sabha seats on its own. In January, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, who had cemented the BJP-JJP post-poll alliance in 2019, had said “lotus would bloom in all 10 Lok Sabha seats in 2024”. Today’s meeting indicated the softening of positions by both sides. The leaders are learnt to have discussed the possibility of a BJP-JJP alliance for the 2024 Haryana Assembly and Lok Sabha polls, but there has been no official word on it.

The JJP is also keen on contesting 18 seats in Rajasthan, which goes to the polls later this year, an issue that is likely to have figured in the discussions today with the BJP, which is seeking to dislodge the Congress in the state. For a while now, there has been ambiguity over the BJP-JJP truck for the next year’s state and Lok Sabha elections, with both sides keeping cards close to their chest.

With the Karnataka defeat exposing chinks in the saffron party’s armour, the BJP might reconsider its alliance strategies to keep friends on its right side in the crucial poll season. On estranged allies, the BJP has so far maintained that they left on their own. “We have never betrayed partnerships,” a BJP leader said.

In the recent past, the BJP-led NDA has lost major allies—Shiv Sena had walked out after the 2019 Maharashtra elections following disagreement over the CM’s post, Akali Dal snapped ties over farm laws in 2020 while the JD(U) left to join hands with the RJD in Bihar.