Advantage Congress

IF the exit polls are to be believed — and most of them were off the mark for the Lok Sabha elections this year — the Congress is set to regain power in Haryana after a decade. The grand old party is expected to form the government on its own, while the ruling BJP is likely to finish a distant second. Over the past two decades, the outcome of the Assembly elections in the state has followed a predictable pattern — two successive terms for the Congress, then two for the BJP. It is wishful thinking for any party to hope for a third straight term in Haryana, where voters tend to lose patience when the government of the day fails to live up to their expectations. Anti-incumbency has indeed weighed the BJP down, with the move to replace Manohar Lal Khattar with Nayab Singh Saini as CM in March reeking of sheer desperation. The release of Dera Sacha Sauda head Gurmeet Ram Rahim ahead of the polling day was a last-ditch attempt aimed at upsetting the Congress’ calculations, but it seems to have been futile.

Defeat in Haryana will worsen the BJP’s northern discomfort. The party had lost Himachal Pradesh to the Congress in 2022 after having suffered electoral debacles in Punjab as well as Delhi. An underwhelming performance in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls has already exposed its vulnerability. Various elections held over the past decade have seen the BJP’s ascendance coincide with the Congress’ decline. The latter’s recent resurgence at the national level will be bolstered if it manages to add Haryana to its kitty.

The Congress is also tipped to make gains in Jammu and Kashmir, where it contested elections in alliance with the National Conference. With the prospect of a hung House looming large in the state-turned-UT, the PDP has indicated that it is keen to keep the BJP out of power. The saffron party, as is its wont, is not going to take an adverse verdict lying down, considering that this was the first Assembly poll held after the historic abrogation of Article 370.