The Outreach Rush

WHEN VIGNESH PHOGAT came out of Delhi airport sitting atop an SUV, fighting tears amidst a grand felicitation, she was flanked by Congress member of Parliament (MP) Deepender Hooda from Haryana’s Rohtak seat, besides fel­low wrestlers Bajrang Punia and Sakshi Malik. As Hooda accompanied her convoy, heading to her village Balali in Haryana, until just before it entered the poll-bound state, Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini was talking to reporters in Chandigarh, assuring that his government and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are standing by Phogat. “She is our daughter and we shall always stand by her,” he said.

Phogat, incidentally, landed in the country a day after the Election Commission announced that Assembly elections in the state will be held on October 1. Congress is hoping to cash in on her fight, along with others like Punia and Malik, against former BJP MP and Wrestling Federation of India President Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh over allegations of sexual harassment of women wrestlers. The Saini government, meanwhile, has announced that Phogat will be treated like an Olympic silver medallist, notwithstanding her disqualification for being 100 grams overweight after becoming the first Indian woman to reach the Olympic wrestling finals. As per Haryana’s sport policy, the state offers ₹4 crore to Olympic silver medallists.

Whether Phogat joins politics or not, she is likely to find her recent battle in Paris and last year at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar resonat­ing in the political wrestlers’ arena in Haryana. A poignant issue, particularly in her home state, it has sparked off a political tug of war between the two main political parties. BJP, reeling under attack from khaps, farmers’ groups, and Opposition, all of whom had backed the wrestlers’ protest against Brij Bhushan, for field­ing his son Karan Bhushan from Kaiserganj in Uttar Pradesh in the Lok Sabha elections, is trying to minimise its political fallout. Babita Phogat, a wrestler who won the gold in the 2014 Com­monwealth Games, joined BJP in 2019, but it is her cousin Vinesh Phogat who seems to have stirred the emotional quotient in the state. The Sarv Khap Panchayat, an umbrel­la body of khaps, decided to honour Phogat with its own gold medal at Rohtak on August 25. Congress, brazenly reaching out to Phogat, with former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda even saying he would have ensured a Rajya Sabha seat for her if he had the majority, is counting on the party’s back­ing for the wrestlers’ agitation for votes to sway in its favour.

Faced with the incumbent disadvantage of being in power for a decade in the state, BJP has laid out a plan to address the concerns of disgruntled sections. Saini recently released the first instal­ment of a bonus of ₹520 crore for 5,20,000 farmers in the state. The state Cabinet had approved a bonus of ₹2,000 per acre for all farmers to compensate for crop loss because of the deficit in the southwest monsoon this year. The farmers’ ire, over demands that included legal guarantees of a minimum support price, farm loan waivers, and the approach of the Modi government towards their agitations, also left an imprint on the Lok Sabha elections, in which BJP’s tally came down to five from having won all 10 seats in 2019. The vote share of Congress, which fought in nine seats leaving one to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), rose from 28.51 per cent in 2019 to 43.68 per cent. BJP, whose vote share dipped from 58.21 per cent in 2019 to 46.1 per cent, found consolation in upsetting the Congress calculations of winning a majority of Lok Sabha seats in the state. Going by these statistics, BJP got the lead in 44 of the 90 Assembly seats, Congress in 42, and AAP in four.

Of the five Lok Sabha seats Congress won, in four—Sonipat, Hisar, Rohtak, and Sirsa—the Jats have clout, indicating that sections of the politically influential caste, comprising most of the state’s farming community, distanced themselves from BJP, in a state where politics was once dominated by the three Lals— Bansi Lal, Bhajan Lal and Devi Lal—all Jats. BJP has brought the kin of all three Lals into its fold, the latest being former Chief Minister Bansi Lal’s daughter-in-law Kiran Choudhry and her daughter Shruti Choudhry, who quit Congress. Devi Lal’s son Ranjit Singh Chautala, an independent MLA, joined BJP earlier this year while Bhajan Lal’s son Kuldeep Bishnoi quit Congress and joined the saffron party in 2022. In a bid to bring the party’s own Jat face to the fore, BJP has made Om Prakash Dhankar chairperson of the panel that will draft the party’s election mani­festo for the Assembly polls. As part of this exercise, the party is sending out a “sankalp yatra rath” seeking suggestions from voters, which will be factored into the manifesto.

While the BJP is treading cautiously to avoid antagonising Jats, estimated to account for nearly 25 per cent in the state, it is bank­ing on the consolidation of non-Jats, which adds up to form the larger chunk of the population. In a last-minute strategic move ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, the BJP leadership went in for a change at the helm in the state, appointing Saini, who belongs to the OBC community, as chief minister, replacing Manohar Lal Khattar, a Punjabi Khatri. Though there is no accurate data, the OBC population, based on various estimates, is cited to be nearly 40 per cent of the state’s population. The gov­ernment’s NFHS data of 2019-21 pegged the OBC population at 28 per cent. Earlier, Saini had replaced Dhankar as state unit chief, a position now held by Mohan Lal Badoli, a Brahmin. In 2014, when Narendra Modi became prime minister, BJP won seven of the 10 Lok Sabha seats, despite winning just 19 per cent of the Jat vote. It also won the As­sembly elections, though it got just 17 per cent of the Jat vote. In 2019, after the violent Jat quota agitation demanding OBC status, BJP won all 10 Lok Sabha seats, in a second Modi wave. In the state, however, it won 40 of the 90 Assembly seats, six short of a majority, making it depend on an alliance with Dushyant Chautala’s Jannayak Janta Party (JJP), to form government. Most of BJP’s senior Jat leaders, including Dhankar and Captain Abhimanyu, lost to Congress and JJP. With BJP snapping ties with JJP, the party is going it alone in the Assem­bly election, which appears to be heading for a direct confrontation between Congress and BJP. JJP, which had won 10 Assembly seats, itself is facing desertions by its MLAs who are joining either BJP or Congress. Neither JJP nor Om Prakash Chautala’s Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) won a single seat in the Lok Sabha elections.

BJP’S POLITICAL ARITHMETIC also factors in an outreach to the Scheduled Castes (SCs), who comprise 19.35 per cent of the state’s population. Close on the heels of the Supreme Court allowing sub-classification of Scheduled Castes for reservation, the Saini government accepted recom­mendations of the state commission for SCs that of the 20 per cent quota in government jobs for the sections, 10 per cent will be reserved for the deprived SCs. “While the decision could give BJP an advantage, it may also alienate the Chamars, a dominant group comprising seven castes and around 47 per cent of the Dalit population in the state,” says social scientist Jitender Prasad.

Congress is also counting on the backing of the Dalits. With its Sirsa MP Kumari Selja, who belongs to the SC community, being seen as one of the aspirants for the chief minister’s post if Congress comes to power, the party is hoping it will give it an ad­vantage in capturing the Dalit votes. As Congress accused the BJP government of stalling the 100 square yard plots scheme for poor, SC, and Other Backward Classes (OBC) families, Saini gave away 7,500 allotment letters for 100 square yard plots to Below Poverty Line (BPL) families in Sonipat. He said Khattar had announced in his budget speech that under the Mukhyamantri Gramin Awas Yojana, plots would be given to 20,000 beneficiaries. He also released funds under other schemes for SCs and the poor.

Under attack from Opposition over unemployment in the run-up to the polls, the state government has taken a series of last-minute steps. The chief minister, in his Independence Day speech in Kurukshetra, said his government will soon fill 36,000 vacancies, besides having already provided 1.44 lakh jobs to the youth on merit. In a state, that accounts for just two per cent of the country’s population, but contributes 11 per cent to those working in the Army, Congress is vehemently raising the Agnipath scheme, which Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi has said will be scrapped if his party came to power. When the scheme was launched in 2022, Bhupinder Hooda, leader of the Opposi­tion in the Haryana Assembly, criticised it saying 75 per cent of the soldiers or ‘Agniveers’, who will be recruited into the Army, will be retired after four years and their future would be uncertain. He had said the plan did not live up to the “tradition, nature or values of the Army”. In July this year, the Saini government announced 10 per cent reservation for Agniveers in select government jobs like mining guards, forest guards, constables, jail wardens, and special police officers (SPOs). The first batch of recruits will complete its four-year term in 2026.

As Hooda leads a campaign ‘Haryana maange hisab’ to take on 10 years of BJP rule, the challenge for the party is the feud within. Prasad, who predicts a close race, says it depends on how he plays his cards. “In Lok Sabha, it was predicted that Congress will get a majority of seats, but it ended up with just five owing mainly to internal bickering among party leaders.”

Meanwhile, BJP, according to party sources familiar with its strategy, is giving charge of seats to senior leaders, including Union ministers, besides zooming in on booth management as part of its micro-level strategy. The party is leaving no stone unturned in its fight for a third consecutive term in Haryana, as Congress, heartened by its resurgence in the state in the Lok Sabha election, is counting on ‘anti-incumbency’, among other factors, to return to power after a decade.

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