Chandigarh: A strong anti-incumbency wave is not the only worry for ruling BJP in poll-bound Haryana as it is also faced with several other adversities including the farmers and employees’ wrath simmering against the saffron party.
While the state government’s stern action against the protesting farmers at Shambhu and Khanauri borders – which also led to death of some protesting farmers – is still fresh in the memory of the farmers of Haryana, the state police action on the protesting guest (temporary) teachers, anganwadi workers and panches and sarpanches have also been a commonplace in the BJP’s second term since 2019.
This displeasure against the BJP apart, what was also said to have irritated a large section of people, especially in the rural interiors of the state, has also been “too much’’ of mandatory use of portals such as “Parivar Pehchan Patra’’ (for each family’s ID), property and crops related transactions.
Even though BJP formed its government for the first time in Haryana with a strong backing of the non-Jat vote banks in 2014 under the leadership of Manohar Lal Khattar, a Punjabi, it repeated its government for the second time in a row in 2019.
The party which had won 47 seats out of the total 90 in 2014, their count fell to 40 in 2019 and had to thus take the support of Dushyant Chautala-led Jannayak Janta Party (JJP, a splinter group of Indian National Lok Dal) and make him deputy chief minister. The BJP, however, snapped its ties with JJP in March this year.
The party had two tall Jat leaders, namely O P Dhankar and Capt Abhimanyu in 2014, and were given important departments of agriculture and finance, respectively, but both of them lost their election in 2019. However, this time it had five ministers – J P Dalal, Ranjit Chautala, Kamlesh Dhanda, Devender Babli and Mahipal Dhanda, though they were not of the stature of the two named above. It
Also, Khattar himself faced protest against himself because of his treatment towards some protesters on occasions when he himself talked harshly to them or instructed his officials or the event organisers to "take them out'' of the venue.
Insiders say that these were some of the reasons that the party had fielded at least 30 new faces in the fray to beat the anti-incumbency and replaced Khattar with OBC leader Nayab Saini, towards the end of BJP’s second term – in March this year.
However, political observers including Dr Rajender Sharma, head, political science department, Maharshi Dayanand University (MDU), Rohtak, opine that since Haryana is a small state, the leaders are easily approached by the people with high expectations.
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"When a government fails to fulfill people’s high expectations, their government is changed; one can see from the records that most of time, governments are changed every five years and whenever, a party has formed its government for the second term it had to cobble up a majority’’, he says adding that hence a strong anti-incumbency against BJP this time.