The coalition of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Jannayak Janta Party (JJP) in Haryana was set for inevitable collapse as both political parties intensified efforts to consolidate their mutually antagonistic support bases. By cutting off its ties with the JJP, which draws its support largely from the agrarian class Jat community, the BJP is, yet again, focusing on the electoral dialectics of ‘Jats’ and ‘non-Jats’ in Haryana. Going into elections along with the JJP could have made it difficult for the BJP to remain as the preferred vehicle of ‘non-Jat’ interests in the State. BJP leaders had on several occasions made it clear that the BJP-JJP alliance was not forged on any ideological ground, but only to form the government in 2019, and not to contest elections. The BJP also installed Nayab Singh Saini as the new Chief Minister of the State, a member of the Other Backward Class (OBC) community, by replacing Manohar Lal Khattar. OBCs account for around 40% of the State’s population. By removing Mr. Lal, who has been Chief Minister for around nine and a half years, the BJP also hopes to combat the ‘anti-incumbency factor’ ahead of the elections in 2024, for the Lok Sabha first, and for the Assembly later. With the appointment of Mr. Saini, a Member of Parliament from Kurukshetra and the BJP’s Haryana State president, the party is also aiming to strengthen its political base in districts of north Haryana, where non-Jats have relatively more influence.
Haryana saw a violent stir for quotas for Jats in the year 2016, which pitted the community against the rest, and its impact is still felt in the politics of the State. Around 36 castes make up the State’s social mosaic, and Sainis, Banias, Brahmins, Yadavs, and Punjabis, among others, tend to band together in opposition to the party that is aligned with the Jat interests at any given point. Jats form about 25% of the population and the JJP, which is the breakaway outfit of Indian National Lok Dal (INLD), has emerged as the primary platform of the community which also has sway in the Congress in the State. The JJP fought the 2019 Assembly election on an anti-BJP plank, but after the BJP failed to get the majority in the 90-member Haryana Assembly, the BJP and JJP forged an alliance of convenience to form a government. The BJP had won 40 seats in the Assembly polls while the JJP had 10 MLAs in its kitty. The JJP has the numbers now even after the collapse of the alliance. Despite the party’s claim of confidence, abrupt moves in Haryana show that the BJP has reasons to worry ahead of the Lok Sabha election. Pre-poll alliances need ideological affinities and aligned values unlike post-poll relationships that can run, in the short term, solely on the desire to share the spoils of political office.
