Can BJP Get Jat Votes In Haryana Assembly Elections?

Haryana is set to have assembly polls on 1 October and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is in no mood to let the Congress get Jat votes en masse like what happened in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

Jats are important to ensure electoral win in the state as they comprise around 25 per cent of the population and have direct influence over more than half of the assembly seats.

Riding on the Jat votes, the Congress was able to win five Lok Sabha seats, while the BJP won the remaining five, down from a clean sweep in 2019.

The Congress is now trying to continue this momentum by focusing on Jat votes. The felicitation of Olympian wrestler Vinesh Phogat by Rohtak MP Deepender Singh Hooda was a move in this direction.

Phogat is a Jat and was disqualified from the 2024 Paris Olympics before her final match for being overweight by 100 grams in the 50-kilogram (kg) weight category and was deprived of any medal.

While the Nayab Singh Saini-led Haryana government felicitated her like an Olympic silver medalist, the Congress demanded her felicitation as a gold medalist and to send her to the Rajya Sabha.

The BJP did not bow down to the Congress' pressure and instead fielded its own Jat leader, Kiran Choudhry as the Rajya Sabha candidate from Haryana.

Choudhry is a five-time Congress MLA and joined the BJP only in June this year, after the Lok Sabha election results, along with her daughter Shruti.

Kiran Choudhry is known to have rifts with former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda for a long while and it was only a matter of time before she switched sides.

She comes from a politically influential Jat family as she is the daughter-in-law of Bansi Lal, three-time chief minister of Haryana and a leader who was extremely close to Sanjay Gandhi and Indira Gandhi in his heydays.

And hence, Choudhry might be the Jat face that the BJP has been looking for. With Kiran being sent to the Rajya Sabha, it is most likely that the BJP will field her daughter Shruti from Tosham.

Tosham assembly constituency in Bhiwani district has been held by Kiran since 2005 and is a family seat, where Bansi Lal won five times and Kiran's husband Surender Singh won twice.

Other than Kiran Choudhry, the BJP is also trying to prop up other Jat leaders. For instance, Om Prakash Dhankhar has been appointed the chairman of the party's manifesto committee.

Dhankhar is the BJP national general secretary and former president of the party's Haryana unit. He has also served as a minister in Haryana and as Badli MLA.

The 14-member manifesto committee also comprises Kiran Choudhry and another Jat leader captain Abhimanyu, former Haryana minister and former Narnaud MLA.

BJP Changes Tack

Till now, the BJP has relied on backward-class voters to form government in 2014 and 2019. However, in 2019, it fell short of a majority and had to ally with Dushyant Chautala's Jannayak Janta Party (JJP).

The alliance fell apart earlier this year, making it necessary for the BJP to make inroads into the Jat vote bank, especially when it is facing an anti-incumbency of 10 years.

While the Jats have not been traditional voters of the BJP, the changing political scenario in the state may leave some Jat votes up for grabs.

This is because the two regional parties — Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) and JJP — known to attract Jat votes are on a steady decline.

Former Haryana chief minister Om Prakash Chautala's INLD could win a single seat in the 2019 assembly elections. It was won by Chautala's son Abhay Singh in Ellenabad.

This was the first election when the two brothers, Abhay and Ajay, contested separately as two parties, INLD and JJP respectively after the split in 2018.

While the JJP won 10 seats at that time and became a kingmaker, it too, is on a decline since its split with the BJP. Of the 10 MLAs, only three, Dushyant Chautala himself, his mother Naina and Amarjeet Dhanda are intact with the party.

Other MLAs have left the party to join either Congress or the BJP. It remains to be seen which party they choose, especially when opinion polls are indicating a split verdict in the state.

While there's an opportunity for the BJP to attract Jat votes due to the void created, the Jat voters are most likely to go with Congress as it appears to be in a strong position in the state.