Tenuous hold

THIS was one electoral outcome that exit polls, psephologists and political scientists found difficult to predict. The Congress relatively poor performance in the latest round of Assembly elections in Haryana was not foreseen by anyone, least of all by Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda. As one who had led the party to decisive victories thrice in the 2004 parliamentary polls, in the Assembly elections in 2005 and in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections Hooda was humbled in the Assembly elections held on October 13. A party that had only six months ago won nine of the 10 parliamentary seats and led in 59 Assembly segments was now seen struggling to form the government.

On October 25, Hooda was sworn in as Chief Minister for a second straight term. Four days after he was back in the saddle, he won a vote of confidence in the 90-member State Assembly, with 47 members (39 of the Congress, seven independents and the lone Bahujan Samaj Party member) voting in his favour. Hooda insisted on a head count following objections from Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) chief Om Prakash Chautala to passing the motion by a voice vote. The effective strength of the House is 89 as Chautala has been elected from Uchana Kalan and Ellennabad constituencies. The electorate disagreed with and in effect rejected Hoodas formula and vision that aimed at making Haryana the No.1 State in the country.

After winning an impressive 67 Assembly seats in 2005, the Congress had to be content with only 40 seats this time round, which fell short of even a simple majority. Hooda was able to stake his claim to form the government once again with the help of the lone BSP legislator and seven independents.

These elections in a sense signalled the revival of the INLD, a party that had been written off following its dismal performance in the last three rounds of elections held in the State. But whether this can be seen as a positive vote for the INLD is not certain.

What is clear is that the anti-incumbency factor weighed heavily against the Congress legislators, and the electorate perhaps voted for the candidate they felt was best suited to defeat the sitting legislator. In such a situation, the benefits were reaped majorly by the INLD, to some extent the Bharatiya Janata Party (it doubled its tally), the fledgling Haryana Janhit Congress (HJC) and a good number of independents. Had the opposition forged a cogent alliance, the Congress strength could have perhaps been reduced to a single-digit number as was the case in 1996 when it won just nine seats, down from 50 seats in the previous Assembly elections, held in 1991. In 1996, the Haryana Vikas Party (HVP) led by Bansi Lal formed the government. However, in the following elections the HVPs strength was reduced to two. In 2000, the INLD won a majority even though it contested only 65 seats, leaving the rest to its alliance partner, the BJP, but five years later its presence was so nominal that its leader could not even stake his claim to be the Leader of the Opposition. Therefore, analysts point out that the Congress ought to be grateful to the electorate this time.

There was no palpable wave against the Congress. A negative wave is seldom felt. It is the positive wave that can be sensed, said a political observer, adding that people had voted more out of a sense of compulsion to defeat the Congress rather than to elect the INLD as a cogent, coherent and viable alternative. It is largely felt that despite everything delimitation, factionalism, anti-incumbency sentiment and wrong selection of candidates the Congress still had a natural advantage as the opposition was seen as hopelessly divided.

The INLD could not take the BJP along with it, despite the fact that the two parties had an alliance six months ago. The HJC, a breakaway faction of the Congress headed by Bhajan Lal and his son Kuldeep Bishnoi, which had emerged as an alternative to the Congress, got only one seat in the Lok Sabha polls, that too in a tough fight, while the BSP and other parties failed to win any seats.

Thus, the overall situation appeared to be in favour of Hooda. Nobody noticed the growing discontent against price rise and unemployment and the resentment among various sections, particularly the agrarian community. The slew of protests by several government and quasi-government departments prior to the elections had come as an indication of the discontent.

A week before the election results were announced, labour unrest broke out in Gurgaon, very much on the lines of the protest led by HMSI (Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India) workers in 2005 after Hooda assumed office. In addition to this, Hooda was accused of being Rohtak-centric, neglecting the rest of the State.

The Congress did well in the Deswali belt comprising Rohtak, Jhajjar and Sonepat districts. It fared badly in the northern parts, the more agriculturally rich areas. It fared poorly in the rest of the State, including the southern parts comprising Rewari, Gurgaon, Mahendargarh, Nuh, Faridabad and Palwal.

Of the 23 Assembly segments falling in these districts, the Congress won 11, the INLD seven, the BJP and the HJC one each and independents seven. Three sitting Congress MLAs, including Karan Singh Dalal from Palwal, lost. In the northern constituencies, the Congress did not win a single seat in Jind and Sirsa districts. The victory of Power Minister Randeep Singh Surjewala in Kaithal was the saving grace as the Congress lost in the remaining three seats in the district.

Among the many heavyweights who lost in the elections are A.C. Chaudhary, L.D. Arora, Finance Minister Birender Singh, State Pradesh Congress Committee chief and four-time MLA Phool Chand Mullana, Veena Mandal, Parsani Devi, Mange Ram Gupta and State Planning Board Chairman Ranjit Singh. L.D. Arora, former Industries Minister and a five-time MLA, lost in Sirsa to a political novice, Gopal Kanda, an independent. Although Kuldeep Bishnoi won from Adampur, his mother Jasma Devi lost to Sampat Singh in Nalwa in Hisar district.

Sampat Singh had severed his more than three-decade-long association with the Devi Lal-Chautala family and joined the Congress recently. Sampat Singh was the INLD candidate for Hisar in the May 2009 Lok Sabha polls. He held Om Prakash Chautala responsible for his defeat in Hisar, which elected Bhajan Lal. Jasma Devis defeat, therefore, is viewed both as a personal loss for the Bhajan Lal family and as a political setback for the HJC, which considers Hisar the pocketborough of the Bhajan Lal family.

Assembly Speaker Raghubir Singh Kadyan retained the Beri seat and Anand Singh Dangi got re-elected from Meham. Interestingly, unlike Sampat Singh, Kailasho Saini and Sushil Kumar Indora, two other prominent INLD leaders who had joined the Congress, were defeated. Indora blamed his defeat and that of the other Congress candidates on internal sabotage. The Congress nominee for Loharu, Somvir Singh, blamed former Tourism Minister Kiran Choudhury for damaging his prospects by ensuring the victory of an independent candidate, J.P. Dalal, from this segment.

The vote share of parties shows interesting trends. Both the INLD and the Congress, despite winning 31 and 40 seats respectively, have a cumulative vote share of around 60 per cent only. The Congress vote share, which was 42.6 per cent in the 2005 elections, came down to 35.07 per cent. In contrast, there was no radical decline in the share of the INLDs vote, which came down from 26.77 per cent in 2005 to 25.67 per cent in 2009. But its vote share as compared to the Lok Sabha polls came down by nearly 10 percentage points. In contrast, the decline in the vote share of the Congress was comparatively smaller, by six percentage points.

The HJC, which was formed last year, saw its vote share come down from 10.04 per cent in the Lok Sabha polls to 7.4 per cent in these elections. The BSP, which fared very poorly, winning just one seat, saw its vote share double from 3.22 per cent in 2005 to 6.33 per cent. But compared with the Lok Sabha polls, it declined by nearly nine percentage points.

Political observers point out that save one public meeting, the BSPs top leadership hardly campaigned in the State. Also, the support promptly offered by the lone BSP MLA to the Congress seemed to indicate a tacit understanding before the elections.

Kishan Pal Gujjar, State president of the BJP, told Frontline that his party had bettered its performance despite going it alone. We have to form some strategy to expand our partys prospects; we cannot do it always with an alliance, he said, satisfied that the BJP doubled its tally and more or less retained its vote share. Kishan Pal Gujjar, who won from Tigaon in Faridabad, denied that the BJP represented only the urban electorate. Their [the Congress] feel-good factor stands exposed; they could not even muster a comfortable majority in these elections, he said.

At his first press conference after being sworn in, Hooda admitted to mediapersons that infighting and flawed ticket distribution had damaged the partys prospects.

Now the question is whether Hooda will be able to provide a stable government with just 35 per cent of the vote share. The support extended by the independents, most of whom do not represent the factions within the Congress, can be tenuous.

Also unstable would be the unconditional support extended by Kuldeep Bishnoi. He is reported to have said that his legislators would not sit in the opposition, a statement which political observers have rightly analysed as an expression of his support to the Congress.

Where will they go is the question. Most of the HJC MLAs do not see a future with Bishnoi. They have won on their own merit and have their own support bases, said a political observer. Clearly, if Hooda wants to ensure that his tenure is going to be smooth and stable, he has to do something radical on several fronts, including addressing the concerns of his electorate. Infighting in the party is likely to exacerbate in the coming months.

The Congress government can hope to last a full term only if he realises that it is an electorate that decides the stability of a government and not a handful of legislators.