Gurugram: From saying it wants to contest two Lok Sabha seats in Haryana to then declaring that it may skip the general election — the Jannayak Janata Party (JJP), an ally of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) until recently, has made a series of flip-flops in a span of two weeks.
After saying that it may consider not fielding candidates for the Lok Sabha polls and instead focus on the assembly elections slated for later this year, the JJP declared that it would contest all 10 of the state’s Lok Sabha seats.
Against this backdrop, party supremo Ajay Singh Chautala hinted Wednesday that the JJP is still open to a revival of the alliance with the BJP in the future.
While this change of course has kept political circles abuzz, the Congress believes there is a tacit understanding between the JJP and the BJP: JJP would contest separately to dent the Congress’s Jat vote bank.
“I have been saying this ever since the JJP ceased to be in the Haryana Cabinet that this party has a new alliance with the BJP now – vote cutter alliance. In fact, they never ended their alliance. They have only changed their roles. The BJP has assigned JJP the task of dividing anti-BJP votes,” former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda told ThePrint Wednesday.
Reacting to such attacks by the Congress, Ajay Singh Chautala Wednesday remarked, “Khisiyani billi khamba noche (A cat unable to catch mice will scratch the pillar in frustration).”
“Every political party contests elections for victory. Let us come to the election field once, and we will tell people who has a tacit understanding with whom,” said the JJP chief, who is the father of former Haryana deputy chief minister Dushyant Chautala.
Without ruling out the possibility of a revival of the BJP-JJP alliance, Ajay Singh Chautala declared Rao Bahadur Singh as the party’s candidate for the Bhiwani-Mahendragarh Lok Sabha seat.
He also said that the JJP honoured the Dharma of the alliance with the BJP for four-and-a-half years with all honesty and that there is no bitterness between the two parties. “I can’t comment now whether our party will enter into an alliance with the BJP in the future. But I will say that in politics no possibility can ever be ruled out,” he told reporters.
Earlier Tuesday, the JJP had announced that its Political Affairs Committee (PAC) had decided to contest all 10 Lok Sabha seats in Haryana.
This was followed by Ajay Singh Chautala asking JJP cadres to prepare to contest even the Chandigarh seat. As for Haryana, party sources told ThePrint that the JJP could field Ajay Singh Chautala’s wife Naina, or younger son Digvijay, from Hisar parliamentary constituency.
Nishan Singh, state president of the JJP, said the party would come out with a list of its candidates for the Lok Sabha polls within the next few days.
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‘JJP will get votes at INDIA bloc’s expense’
According to political analyst Satish Tyagi, the JJP’s decision to contest all 10 Lok Sabha seats in Haryana would only end up denting the prospects of non-BJP parties without the JJP actually winning any seat.
“Like it was in 2019, the Lok Sabha election in Haryana is going to be a bipolar affair. Whatever votes JJP candidates get, will only be at the expense of the INDIA (Congress-AAP, in the case of Haryana).”
Citing the example of 2019 when the Congress lost the Rohtak seat on account of the JJP, Tyagi added, “JJP candidate Pradeep Kumar Deswal got 21,211 votes and remained at fourth position after the BJP, the Congress and BSP candidates. Congress’s Deepender Hooda polled 5,66,342 votes and lost to Arvind Sharma (who polled 5,73,845 votes) of the BJP by a margin of 7,503 votes. It goes without saying that a large majority of Deswal’s 21,211 voters were Jats who could have voted for Hooda.”
The BJP, however, denied that the party has any sort of secret understanding with the JJP after the two parted their ways.
“Every political party in a democracy takes its own decisions to contest or not contest an election. If the JJP has taken a decision to contest all 10 seats in Haryana, the party has the right to take that decision,” BJP’s national general secretary O.P. Dhankar told ThePrint Wednesday.
“The BJP is going to win 370 seats on account of the popularity of Modi ji and the party doesn’t need to have any tacit understanding with anyone,” he added.
The Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) led by Ajay’s brother Abhay Singh Chautala, meanwhile, said that the JJP has lost its support among voters in Haryana and would only end up causing slight damage to the Opposition by splitting anti-incumbency votes.
“Had JJP been of any worth now, BJP would have kept it as an alliance partner. After all, JJP was ready to remain in the alliance with just one seat. But BJP knew that JJP wouldn’t be able to add any votes to its kitty. Hence, the ruling party dropped JJP as a partner,” Jasbir Singh Jassa, state executive member of the INLD, told ThePrint Wednesday.
Jassa added that there is “huge resentment” against the JJP among its voters, particularly farmers, because of the support it extended to “anti-farmer and anti-sportsperson actions of the BJP government”.
“Whatever little votes JJP gets in these elections will be from the farmers. And this will cut into the Opposition votes,” said the INLD leader.
Nishan Singh, however, maintained that the JJP would contest the Lok Sabha polls with all its might and only the results will show how popular the party and its leader Dushyant Chautala are among the electorate.
“It is a fact that we didn’t end the alliance and BJP did it. We always wanted to contest Lok Sabha polls in alliance with BJP. But BJP wanted to contest all 10 seats. Now, we have also decided to contest all 10 seats,” he said.
Singh added that it was wrong to assume that the JJP does not have an issue merely because it was in alliance with the BJP for four-and-a-half years.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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