The Bharatiya Janata Party’s target of “400 paar” for the Lok Sabha elections is not realistic, indicated erstwhile Haryana ally Jannayak Janta Party’s Dushyant Chautala in an exclusive conversation with CNN-News18.
Speaking about his party’s breakup with the BJP, he said, “No political party ever gets finished and we have seen many such episodes in the history of Haryana. So what happened recently is no surprise; hopefully, we will win good numbers.”
Elaborating on the reasons, the former Haryana deputy chief minister said that the seat-sharing talks for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls failed. “They wanted to give us one seat and we wanted two. We had a conversation and in the end, the BJP by going with the survey, etc, decided to change the chief minister. So we decided that we would not be a part of this alliance. But the government did fulfil a lot of its poll promises.”
In 2019, the JJP extended support to the BJP after the saffron party fell short of the majority mark in the assembly elections. The BJP-JJP alliance ended last month.
“We did have a meeting with the BJP top brass including home minister Amit Shah and there were a lot of discussions but we didn’t see it coming that the CM would be changed and further we didn’t come to an agreement on seat-sharing either,” said Chautala. “Even if I have regrets, I can’t do much about it. I have to move on. Like a game of Ludo, I have to ensure whether the dice throws a 6 or a 1 at me, I have to continue playing the game as long as I am able to win.”
As the alliance split, the BJP replaced Manohar Lal Khattar with Nayab Singh Saini, a strong leader of the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) as the chief minister.
“We will announce our candidates (for the Lok Sabha polls) in the middle of Navratri,” Chautala told CNN-News18. “We also want to experiment, which we did earlier and that is to give opportunity to the youth. At the age of 36, I feel it’s a good age working group. We also intend to field a number of women candidates in the upcoming elections. Hopefully, these experiments will work for us.”
The BJP has come up with the slogan “Ab ki baar, 400 paar”, indicating an ambitious 400+ target for its alliance in the Lok Sabha polls. Referring to this, Chautala said, “There was a time if you remember in 1977 when it was said ‘India is Indira and Indira is India’. Everybody thought that she would come back with a thumping majority, but she lost that election. In India, you cannot give out the numbers. In the last assembly election, Khattar announced that ‘we would win 75 out of 90 seats’, but they ended up getting only 40. If the BJP thinks it is strong then even the opposition is strong. Let them not forget that.”
Lok Sabha polls for all 10 seats in Haryana will be held in the sixth of the seven-phase general elections on May 25.
“Lok Sabha will be a mixed bag,” Chautala said. “I’m sure the BJP will not win more than five seats. Congress will be around three seats and we have a good chance of winning about 2-3 seats. We still have a long way to go for the election and we will have to see how we start this. The heat will travel from Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh to Haryana. We will also see the impact of the southern states. Elections are very interesting because after having done well in 2019, where it was the BJP all over, the assembly elections did not go their way.”
He also indicated that he would contest the Lok Sabha polls if the party wants. “I will do so if my party tells me because I have been a voice of Haryana in Parliament for five years and I worked for the people of the state every day. I did the same as a minister in the state and the state’s deputy CM. If the people of Haryana feel that I can become their ‘aawaaz’ (voice) in Delhi and if my party feels that I can be that candidate who is fit to contest the Lok Sabha election, I’ll give it a shot,” said Chautala.
Speaking about the Congress’s manifesto, which the BJP has attacked and compared to the Muslim League’s vision, Chautala said that “all this kind of appeasement needs to stop”.
He also spoke about Haryana’s electorate. “If you have worked for the people, and if you have been there in good and bad times, they will support you and they will vote. I went into the elections in 2019 very confident of doing well. But just a few days before my election Pulwama (terror attack) happened and the whole equation changed and I lost by more than three lakh votes. I had always stood up in Parliament and spoken about the people of Haryana throughout my entire tenure. But things quickly changed, including that within six months of my going into assembly polls, my party was able to do well and I shifted from 5% to 16%,” he said. “My only thing is that the youth must consolidate and lead the way. If we have given 50% reservation to the women, we must give 50% reservation to the youth. Chautala is a village and is not a caste. In our village, we had 36 sub-castes. Many people from outside came and built their homes in our village, but to get over this whole caste fight we must look at empowering the youth. More than 50% of Haryana’s population is under 45 years of age and they are the ones that we need to groom. If we can get this going that can be the biggest factor.”
Chautala also focused on Haryana’s crucial Hisar seat. “Hisar has always been a very interesting seat and a hot seat and it has its impact on Haryana’s projects and Haryana election. My father had contested the seat way back in 2011,” he said.
Has the JJP been unlucky with alliances in recent times? “Yes, we had decided to go with AAP but they chose not to contest the assembly elections. We had an alliance with the BSP, which was a rocky road. They ended the alliance with just a tweet put out by their leader without informing us. But we went solo in the last assembly elections and had a post-poll alliance with the BJP, which was an extremely successful one and it was the longest alliance in Haryana’s history by a long way,” Chautala said. “We have multiple airports and a refurbished road network. We have the biggest car manufacturing unit with an investment of Rs 40,000 crore. I was fortunate that I was able to see all this happen. The growing trajectory of the GST collections in the state has made it among the top five in the country.”
The JJP, which has a sizeable support base of farmers, has faced flak in recent times for not standing with them. However, Chautala said, “There is a lot of work that is going on and as a minister, I did procurement at MSP for many crops. We did the first-ever direct benefit transfer into the farmers’ accounts to the tune of Rs 1 lakh crore. That should continue. However, I have already started seeing farmers facing difficulties in procurement. In the next few days, a large number of farmers will be bringing wheat for procurement. I do not think the present government is equipped to deal with this and the farmers are already facing a problem.”
Any political decision is always looked into in detail in hindsight, he said, talking about the JJP distancing itself from the farmers’ protests. “But the protesting farmers are our own people, they have not come from any other state. We will listen to their concerns and try to address them. As a minister, I did whatever I could for them, including procuring Rs 14 crore worth of grains. Which other state has done that? Farming and agriculture are different issues and procurement is a separate issue. The farmers were on the streets demanding MSP procurement, etc, and they wanted the central government to move these demands from the concurrent to the primary list. Of course, a series of meetings happened, but nothing has come out of it so far. Earlier, the farmers withdrew their protest but were still waiting for a solution,” he said.
Chautala also spoke about the protest by wrestlers, mostly from Haryana, over alleged sexual misconduct by BJP leader and former Wrestling Federation of India chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh.
“The fight of the wrestlers was against the federation, not against the government of Haryana. I have also faced a similar situation with the table tennis association. We went to court and got a solution and elections were held and a new body was formed. Delhi Police has done its investigation and a charge sheet has been submitted. The wrestlers are from Haryana, but their fight is not against Haryana. The media made it an issue of ‘Haryana government versus wrestlers’, but it was simply a fight of the wrestlers against the federation whose chief was a BJP MP. After his removal, are they still there on the street?” he said.
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