Assembly polls 2024: Importance of Dalit votes in Haryana politics

In the 17 Assembly segments reserved for SCs, the Congress led in 11 in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, and its INDIA bloc ally, Aam Aadmi Party, in two more

In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept all of Haryana’s 10 seats. Five years later, the party could win only half of the 10 seats, losing five to the Congress, including the two Scheduled Caste (SC) reserved seats of Ambala and Sirsa.

In the 17 Assembly segments reserved for SCs, the Congress led in 11 in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, and its INDIA bloc ally Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in two more. The BJP led in only four segments. Five years back, in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP had led in 15 of these segments and the Congress in two.

However, the BJP’s decline in Haryana had started five months after its historic performance in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. In the Haryana Assembly polls in October of that year, the BJP could win five of the 17 SC reserved seats, down from nine that it had bagged in the 2014 Assembly polls. The Congress increased its tally of these seats from four to seven.

In the weeks leading up to this October 5 polling date, Haryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini has reached out to the SCs and the poor with the accelerated implementation of various schemes, especially the B R Ambedkar housing scheme. According to a senior BJP leader, the INDIA bloc Opposition’s narrative of a “400 paar” BJP government that will seek to amend the Constitution to the detriment of the marginalised sections “hurt the party” among the Dalits in the 2024 LS polls. The party has since tried to build bridges with Jatavas, Balmikis, Dhanaks and other smaller Dalit communities in Haryana.

The Congress approach has focussed on activist groups fanning out on seats with significant SC population to campaign for the party, and it has showcased its Dalit leadership comprising Sirsa MP Kumari Selja and state unit chief Udai Bhan. Two other “Jat-Dalit alliances”, namely the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP)-Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) one and the Azad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram)-Jannayak Janata Party one, are also in the fray.

“Jats might claim to be the largest caste group, but there is no census data to support that. In the case of SCs, there is data that we are almost 21 per cent of Haryana’s population. Unfortunately, neither the BJP nor the Congress has given us our due share in power structures. I hope things will change after October 8,” said Ashok Bharti, chief of the National Confederation of Dalit Organisations (NACDOR).