BJP’s historic Haryana hat-trick, National Conference wins Jammu and Kashmir in 2024

On Tuesday, BJP fought back to bring sudden halt to Congress’s carousing and produced a miraculous upset in an election it barely looked poised to fight for a historic third term in Haryana going by the exit polls. Similarly, Jammu and Kashmir also turned all projections upside down as state gave a big victory to National Conference Congress; Farooq Abdullah anointed his son Omar Abdullah for the next Chief Ministers position.

BJP was able to get 48 of the 90 seats for the Haryana; 46 is the over half mark. The Congress won 37 seats.

The incumbent party did not win an absolute majority of seats, making it the first time for any party in Haryana since the state’s formation in 1966 to fail to win a third term. Once as formidable force in Haryana – the INLD of Om Prakash Chautala emerged two of legislators while the JJP launched by Dushyant Chautala, who joined BJP fold recently, drew a complete blank.

In Jammu and Kashmir, the Assembly’s 90 seats for the first time in a decade and the Congress-NC won 47 out of 90 seats and leads in one seat of the state while BJP 28 seats and leads in one seat. Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti emerged victorious in three seats. Something of an upset for the AAP was Mehraj Malik’s victory in Doda.

Chief Minister and National Conference’s victor in Budgam and Ganderbal constituencies Omar Abdullah fumed: “Those who wanted to finish off us have been wiped off instead.” Regarding government formation he said that they should wait until results declarative in its full sense.

The chance of a hung assembly in the Union Territory has the opposition parties uneasy to deal with the five MLAs nominated by the Lieutenant Governor.

Jammu Kashmir and Haryana elections, few points

1. As the exit polls indicated the Congress party swept through the state of Haryana they have potential strategic errors such as fully relying on the Jat prominent Bhupinder Singh Hooda where give little attention to Dalit politician Kumari Selja.

In particular the BJP, combining non-Jat votes further decimated the Congress. The grand old party concentrated more on the Jat vote bank leaving the numerically significant and politically powerful Ahirwal region consisting of Gurugram, Faridabad, Rewari & Mahendragarh unchartered.

2. The BJP seems all set to perform better than its 2019 LS performance when it had secured only 40- seat and had to form an alliance with the JJP. One of the reason that may have attributed to this success is the ability of the party to feed new generation candidates and to expand its appeal with OB-C and SC voters.

3. Haryana is being pointed towards Nayab Singh Saini as the man largely responsible for BJP’s success. When Saini dethroned Manohar Lal Khattar as Chief Minister of the state, the BJP deployed him, belonging to the OBC group, as their main poll representative. He is viewed as having played the role of leading the party out of the region’s anti-incumbency sentiments to help the party gain another term in the state.

In Jammu and Kashmir, where the poll of polls indicated a photo finish, the National Conference fought a resurrection. The party secured 41 seats and is ahead in one, while coalition partner Congress has won six. As far as forming government was concerned, the NC chief Farooq Abdullah himself was quite confident about building up the government and added more to that by saying that “It will not be ‘police raj’ here but ‘logon ka raj’ much here”.

4. The BJP was clearly the winner in Jammu region, but poorly aperformed in the Kashmir valley. However, the five-year ambitious ‘Naya Kashmir’ campaign of the central government that sought to turn the region into a symbol of peace, development and prosperity didn’t work as a political asset to garner votes in the saffron party legislators’ favour in the region.

In Julana, congress candidate and wrestler Vinesh Phogat tasted victory in her polling debut. The Olympian polled 64, 548 votes and had a lead of 6,553 votes over her nearest rival, Yogesh Kumar of BJP. Phogat was nominated by the Congress after she failed to qualify for the final in the Paris Olympics. Staring defeat in Haryana, the Congress filed a complaint to the Election Commission for delays in updating trends on its website.

5. As in the Lok Sabha elections, here in Haryana, we are again seeing the pace of uploading trends up to date on the ECI website slow down. Has the BJP been posting old and wrong trends in order to seek pressure on the administration? say Congress leader Jairam Ramesh tweeted.

The Election Commission made light of the charge made by Congress as baseless. The EC did not take lightly of this strategy of the party to “surreptitiously give credence to irresponsible, unfounded and uncorroborated malafide narratives” on the proclaimed clean image of name of the party’s presidential candidates.

6. In Jammu and Kashmir, where the poll of polls indicated a photo finish, the National Conference fought a resurrection. The party secured 41 seats and is ahead in one, while coalition partner Congress has won six. As far as forming government was concerned, the NC chief Farooq Abdullah himself was quite confident about building up the government and added more to that by saying that “It will not be ‘police raj’ here but ‘logon ka raj’ much here”.

7. The BJP was clearly the winner in Jammu region, but poorly aperformed in the Kashmir valley. However, the five-year ambitious ‘Naya Kashmir’ campaign of the central government that sought to turn the region into a symbol of peace, development and prosperity didn’t work as a political asset to garner votes in the saffron party legislators’ favour in the region.

8. In Julana, congress candidate and wrestler Vinesh Phogat tasted victory in her polling debut. The Olympian polled 64, 548 votes and had a lead of 6,553 votes over her nearest rival, Yogesh Kumar of BJP. Phogat was nominated by the Congress after she failed to qualify for the final in the Paris Olympics.

9. Among the reverses of AAP, the party had no single victory in Haryana although it was the home state of its chief, Arvind Kejriwal. Meanwhile the AAP candidate Mehraj Malik is in front in the contest for the Doda assembly segment in the Jammu and Kashmir. In Haryana, AAP has suffered majorly because the party was unable to negotiate a seat adjustment agreement with the Congress, its partner in the national INDIA alliance.

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