The Bharatiya Janata Party stunned everyone with its stupendous victory in the recently held Haryana assembly elections. Every exit poll talked about a comfortable Congress victory, and the ingenious BJP think tank humbled each one.
The 2024 Lok Sabha results humbled the BJP with a slide in its seats, and it’s evident that they were caught off-guard. At that time, several exit polls showed 280 to 300+ seats, which was proved wrong. The first significant assembly election post the stunning Lok Sabha results was the Haryana one which also revealed that the exit polls were wrong. In some way, these two back-to-back nightmares for the poll pundits show that the people are outsmarting them and will not enjoy the same credibility they used to enjoy.
Another significant point to observe is the stark difference between the BJP and the Congress as an organization. The BJP has proved that it really works on it prior mistakes seriously, makes the right course corrections and bounces back in their next test. On the other hand, Congress seems to be glaringly weak in this area. Let us deep dive into this point a bit for better understanding. The BJP took several bold decisions which were a bit surprising and counterproductive at that time but proved to be masterstrokes after the actual results came out. Nayab Singh Saini, an OBC leader and not a very popular face, replacing Manohar Lal Khattar a few months before the Lok Sabha elections, consolidation of the non-Jat/Jatav votes, quickly resolving the differences with the RSS who apparently did 16000 meetings in Haryana, declining tickets to several sitting MLAs are just a few key examples of the intelligent steps taken by the BJP which led to their victory. On the other hand, Congress totally failed to take advantage of the small momentum they got after their increased tally in the Lok Sabha elections by putting all their eggs in the usual baskets relying totally on Deepender Hooda. Rahul Gandhi also couldn’t stop Kumari Selja from going public about her misgivings about the Hooda domination and this was noticed by the Dalit voters.
The Dalit voters who in some states got a bit carried away by the Congress narrative of “Samvidhan aur aarakshan khatre mein hai” in the Lok Sabha elections, probably understood the hollowness of these narratives when they saw no such thing happening after Narendra Modi came back to power for the third time and when they saw their leader, Kumari Selja, being treated so shoddily by the Haryana Congress they understood how much the Congress walks their talk. All this probably led to this segment moving towards the BJP. This will have a great impact on the Dalit voters in Maharashtra and other upcoming elections states.
The Haryana elections are very significant for the BJP as a loss in this first major election post Lok Sabha polls would have pushed them to the backseat with every single TV news channel talking about the decline of Narendra Modi’s popularity and about the Congress rising a viable alternative. The Congress would also have used this Haryana victory to push its narrative much more strongly in the upcoming elections in Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Delhi etc. This win in Haryana now will give BJP a much-needed enthusiasm and momentum to win the next big Maharashtra polls.
Another big takeaway is that BJP now has understood how the Congress and its allies will play their cards of freebies and lofty promises. The only downside is that BJP has no other go but to roll out some of these populist schemes before Congress does or make them more attractive than the opposition which is now predictable. Although this will not be good economics and will go against the non-revadi approach earlier taken by Narendra Modi, they know that if they don’t do it people will go with the others who promise it. This is one big takeaway that will be common feature in every BJP strategy running up to every subsequent election from now, sadly but rightly so.
Yet another very significant takeaway is that the Haryana voters have rejected the so called famers protest by leaders like Rakesh Tikait. The protest was done predominantly by a group of farmers of Haryana and Punjab. People saw through their design and even though again the drama of marching to Delhi etc. was started, it did not pay any dividend to the political masters who were inciting this against the Modi government. Based on the Haryana election results, there is a high chance that these kinds of protests will fade away into oblivion as people are tired of such devious acts which are also misused by foreign powers. Rakesh Tikait is now left blaming Deepender Hooda for the failure of their efforts in Haryana.
BJP will now continue to consolidate the Hindu votes as much as possible in every state election. They will start doing harder Hindutva politics. This is evident from similar speeches by Narendra Modi, Yogi Adityanath and RSS chief, Mohan Bhagawat around the importance of Hindus unifying in order to avoid disastrous consequences. The Congress and the other INDI Bloc parties might call this fear mongering, against the secular structure, usual jhumla of BJP etc. but this time there will be more traction for BJP’s call. Pawan Kalyan, one of BJP’s allies, leading the Sanatana charge from the south will only act as a fillip to the BJP narrative of Hindu unification.
Several non-BJP leaning political pundits and journalists will argue that Maharashtra elections will be very different from the Haryana elections as their local issues will not be the same and it will be anybody’s game, at the back of their minds they also know that the Haryana results have already given an edge to the BJP and has given them a good formula for winning. The more enthused BJP and RSS cadres will leave no stone unturned in Maharashtra and if the Ajit Pawar factor does not prove to too much of a liability, BJP has great chances for a victory in this state where Shivaji Maharaj still resides in the hearts of every Hindu.
Ananth Mahadevan is a political commentator.
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