Having drawn a blank in the recent Lok Sabha elections while being in alliance with the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) in Haryana, the Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) today parted ways with its regional ally, well before the impending state elections.
BJP general secretary Vijay Goel, who is in charge of the state, said clearly that the BJP would go alone in the coming elections, tentatively scheduled in October along with other four states — Maharashtra, Mizoram, Jharkhand and Goa.
Party sources, however, say the BJP may explore the possibility of an electoral understanding with the Haryana Janhit Party (HJP), led by Bhajan Lal, and his son Kuldip Bishnoi later. Though the HJP did not win a single seat in the recent elections, its presence seemed to have eroded the base of the INLD.
On Friday, the Haryana cabinet had recommended dissolution of the State Legislative Assembly seven months before its term was to end. Buoyed by its recent success of winning nine of the 10 Lok Sabha seats, Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda had apparently decided to hold elections earlier than scheduled.
Goel, who left for the state to finalise the BJP’s election strategy, said the party would contest 60 of the 90 Assembly seats. “We wanted more seats in the sharing arrangement but the INLD leaders are adamant against it,” he said.
However, INLD leaders, who were taken aback by the BJP’s decision, claimed that so far no talks on seat-sharing had been held between the two parties.
INLD chief Om Prakash Chautala even claimed that his party’s alliance with the BJP remained intact. He has called the Political Affairs Committee meeting on August 27.
The BJP-INLD alliance was forged before the 2009 general elections, even though many BJP leaders had opposed this move. The general impression in the BJP is that the INLD’s hold as a regional party was waning with the party being run as a personal fiefdom by Chautala and his son. The alliance also did not prove effective on the ground as activists of both the parties had not links on the ground.
Of the 90 Assembly seats in Haryana, BJP has been demanding 45 seats while INLD was willing to give around 30 seats to its partner.
This is not the first time that the INLD and BJP have snapped ties before elections. In the 1987 and 1999 Assembly elections also, the parties had parted ways owing to differences.
This apart, the two parties had also snapped ties after the 2004 Lok Sabha elections. Both the parties had contested on their own in the 2005 Assembly elections. While BJP could just win one seat, the INLD had won nine as Congress swept the polls winning 62 seats.
