Uphill task for Cong to topple Khattar govt

Sushil Manav

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 21

A total of 1.82 crore voters will decide the fate of candidates in 90 Assembly seats of Haryana. Going by the Lok Sabha election results with the BJP winning all 10 seats in the state, the October 21 elections are likely to be a contest between the ruling party and the Congress. The split in the Chautala clan has diminished the prospects of the INLD as well as its offshoot Jannayak Janata Party (JJP).

While the BJP has made it clear that the elections will be contested under the leadership of CM Manohar Lal Khattar, the Congress says it will take a call on the issue post-results.

Targeting 75-plus seats, Khattar has already criss-crossed the length and breadth of the state during his 22-day-long ‘Jan Ashirwad Yatra’. On the other hand, the faction-ridden Congress could start workers’ meetings only after September 15 when the central leadership replaced Ashok Tanwar with Kumari Selja as state president and appointed former CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda as CLP Leader in place of Kiran Choudhry.

With the birth anniversary of Chautala clan patriarch Devi Lal falling this month, the JJP and INLD would be holding rallies at Rohtak on September 22 and September 25, respectively. In August this year, the JJP had joined hands with the BSP in the hope of consolidating Jat and Dalit votes, but the alliance proved short-lived and couldn’t last even a month. In the past, Jats from Rohtak, Sonepat and Jhajjar have backed Hooda and those from Sirsa, Fatehabad, Hisar and Jind the Chautalas. It will be interesting to watch which way the Jats go as a number of Jat leaders have joined the BJP since the parliamentary polls. 

In 2014, the BJP came to power for the first time on its own with 47 seats.The INLD was second with 19 seats and the Congress third with 15.Two seats went to the Haryana Janhit Congress (HJC), and one each to the SAD and the BSP. Five Independents made it too.

Since 2014, the BJP has not lost an election in Haryana – it won all five mayoral elections, the Jind bypoll and the LS elections, winning all 10 seats with a lead in 79 Assembly seats. 

People with us

Pleased with BJP govt’s transparent functioning, the people have decided to hand over the power once again. —ML Khattar, Chief Minister

voters will oust BJP

The govt will be ousted. The past five years have seen bad governance, chaos, riots and a decline in the state’s economy. —BS Hooda, CLP Chief