Haryana and J&K Assembly Elections: Major Takeaways | P. S. Jayaramu

October 9, 2024

The results of the Assembly elections held in Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir are out. The results have great lessons for all the actors - the Political Parties and their leaders, the stakeholders, mainly the electorate, for the exit pollsters and the media, mainly the electronic media, which were more obsessed with the outcomes than the actual players themselves. I will address these aspects of the takeaways of the elections after a brief look at the electoral battle in Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir.

In so far as Haryana is concerned, the major issues facing the contending Political Parties were the farmer’s issues, mainly MSP for their crops, the unemployment situation in the State, where the youth are forced to migrate to the other regions of the country and even abroad in search of jobs, the anti-incumbency faced by the BJP, as a result of its ten years rule, more so the unpopularity of Manoharlal Khattar, who was moved to the centre by the BJP central leadership and in whose place was brought Nayan Saini to head the state government, under whose leadership the Party has emerged victorious for the third time.

As regards Jammu and Kashmir, the BJP went to the polls riding on its the much-talked about achievement of ending terrorism in the Valley and the State returning to normalcy with tourism gaining ground etc. The BJP boosted of consigning Article 370 to history and the State being on the march to progress as a Union Territory. The election, of course was fought by the National Conference (NC) and the Indian National Congress (INC) led India coalition with the PDP and other players contesting on their own, though there were widespread rumours that the PDP and some independent candidates in Jammu were proxies for the BJP. Be that at may, the election results showed amply that the electoral contest was largely bipolar between the NC-INC combine and the BJP.

The Major Takeaways:

Firstly, the argument about anti-incumbency and its role in deciding the electoral fortunes of the contending Parties. The generally held view is that anti-incumbency sets in as a major disadvantage for the Party which has been in power. In the case of Haryana, it was widely talked about that this factor would work against the BJP which has ruled the State for two consecutive terms. But, the electoral outcome reveals that the anti-incumbency factor did not work against the BJP at all. Rather, as some argue, the results turned out to be pro-incumbency, if anything. Such an argument apart, it is useful to record that the BJP national leadership was aware of the anti-incumbency factor and sought to overcome it by firstly changing the chief minister six months before by bringing in Nayan Saini as a replacement for Manoharlal Khattar. Saini being an OBC leader was able to woo the votes of OBCs who constitute about 40 percent of Haryana’s population in the elections. Also, going to the polls under a new CM was BJP’s way of getting over the anti-incumbency factor. Furthermore, the Party took care to change candidates in a good number of constituencies to overcome the possibility of its incumbent candidates losing the elections, an exercise which worked out very useful to the Party. BJP was, in nutshell, successful in micro-managing the polls to its advantage. Generally speaking, major contending parties do undertake such an exercise to beat anti-incumbency in state and national elections. For that matter, the Congress Party too undertook such an exercise in Haryana, but evidently it did not succeed with its experiment. The lesson that is to be learnt is that change of candidates per se will not yield positive results. Rather, what contributes to the success of candidates is how effectively Parties carry out surveys about the prospects of victory of their candidates based on constituency feedbacks. It looks like the BJP succeeded in this exercise. As for the Congress, it’s shocking failure at the hustkings was due to a combination of factors like, the lack of a unified campaign by the local leadership due to the open differences between Deepinder Singh Hooda and the popular Dalit leader and member of Parliament Kumari Selja, faulty distribution of tickets by giving nearly 70 tickets to Hooda’s supporters, the excessive focus on the Jat votes, all of which sent an unfavourable message to the electorate.

Secondly, BJP’s shrewd management of the issues. The Party was, perhaps, able to soften the anger of the farmers by spending close to ?5 crores on each village on development/welfare schemes, in addition to the MSP on 24 crops and helping the farmers to sell their crops through the “apna fasal apna app”. Also, by enhancing job opportunities to the youth, the Saini regime seems to have softened their anger against the withdrawal of Agniveer scheme .

The third major takeaway is that bipolar politics stands vindicated in the case of both Haryana and J&K. In Haryana, the contest was between the Congress and the BJP while in J&K, it was between the NC-Congress combine and the BJP. Additionally, in Haryana, the electorate dealt a blow to the dynastic politicians, be it of those belonging to the Devi Lal and other families. In contrast, in J&K,the picture was a mix of both. In so far as the results in the Kashmir Valley is concerned, the electorate reposed full faith in the Abdullaha dynasty by returning Omar Abdullaha from both the constituencies, while they rejected the Mufti family. By reposing faith in the Abdullaha family, the voters also rejected the smaller parties, including Engineer Rasheeda’s AIP.

The fourth major takeaway is the failure, yet again, of the predictions of Exit Pollsters. Virtually all of them predicted the victory of the Congress Party in Haryana and a somewhat hung assembly in J&K. The electoral outcome proved them utterly wrong, as seen by the fact that the BJP has returned to power in Haryana by performing a hatrick whereas in J&K, the NC-INC combine has won the majority and is out to form the government. Yogendra Yadav admitted in an interview that he has been proved completely wrong in Haryana, though of course he did not give any numbers.

The fifth and an associated takeaway is that voters, more so the rural voters, have demonstrated that they are the true sovereigns and that they can not be taken for granted. That is both the beauty and character of democracy at work in India.

The final takeaway is that there can be no link between the outcome of one election and the other that follows. Though the BJP was chastened by the electorate in the Lok Sabha polls, while it still formed the government under the NDA after the Lok Sabha elections, it has been returned to power in Haryana, probably much against its own expectations. The lesson clearly is that the Indian voters take each election by itself and cast their vote going by their wisdom-driven judgement of candidates and Political Parties, a factor no analyst or pollster shall dare to ignore henceforth.

(Author: Prof. P. S. Jayaramu is former Dean, Faculty of Arts, Bangalore University and a former Senior Fellow, ICSSR, New Delhi)