While its top leadership engages and negotiates with protesting wrestlers in Delhi, the Bharatiya Janata Party has simultaneously started to test the waters and neutralize the electoral fallout of the grappler’s agitation in Haryana.
The epicenter of the political experiments is located at Uchana Kalan, an assembly constituency in the Jat-dominated Jind district some 180 km southwest of the capital Chandigarh.
In a surprise move, at a party worker’s meeting on Saturday, BJP Haryana in-charge and former Tripura chief minister Biplab Dev set the cat among the pigeons by saying that BJP should have its MLA from Uchana Kalan in the next elections.
The problem, however, is that the constituency is currently held by BJP’s ally and deputy CM and Jananayak Janata Party (JJP) leader Dushyant Chautala whose support is critical to the survival of the Manohar Lal Khattar government.
Prem Lata, whom Deb referred to in his speech as the most suitable candidate to represent the seat, is the wife of former union minister Birender Singh. She lost the last assembly polls to Chautala by a comprehensive margin.
Dushyant Chautala- the great-grandson of former deputy PM Devi Lal- has retorted to Deb's assertion by digging in his heels. He has since announced that he “would contest from Uchana” at all costs.
Sources in the BJP indicate that Biplab Deb’s statement should be read in the context of the party’s attempts to keep its flock together as some leaders fear they will have to sacrifice their seats if BJP has a formal pre-poll tie-up with the JJP.
An alternative theory posits that JJP and BJP do not complement each other as electoral partners. While the latter draws its support from the 73 percent non-Jat population of Haryana, the former competes with former CM Bupinder Singh Hooda-led Congress for 27 percent Jat votes.
In the 2019 state assembly elections, JJP’s strong performance in Jat-dominated pockets pulled Congress down to the second spot, opening the doors for a post-poll BJP-JJP tie-up.
With JJP now part of the BJP alliance, Congress fancies its chances at Jat mobilization as most of the protesting wrestlers belong to the community from Haryana.
However, what suits BJP electorally is a division in the Jat votes and consolidation of the remaining 73 percent electorate.
The elections to the Haryana state assembly would be held in 2024. For the ruling party, the immediate concern is the Lok Sabha elections as it won all the 10 Lok Sabha seats in Haryana in 2019.
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