Polls in two states will test new outfits
Haryana and Maharashtra will simultaneously go to Assembly polls on 21 October.
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Saturday constituted a five-judge Constitution bench headed by Justice
N.V. Ramana to conduct hearing on a clutch of petitions connected with revoking the provisions of Article 370, which gave autonomy to Jammu and Kashmir. It is learnt from official sources that the bench will begin hearing the matter from the first week of October. The petitions have challenged the constitutional validity of the Centre’s decision and subsequent presidential orders on scrapping the provisions of the Article, which actually made it a dead letter in the Constitution. Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi in August, while referring the petitions to the Constitution bench, had said that a larger bench will begin hearing the matter effective from the first week of October. From inheritors of political legacies to flag bearers of “alternative politics”, the Assembly polls in Haryana and Maharashtra are going to be a test for many new political outfits in both the states.
Haryana, famous for its political experiments, will witness three new political parties, making the state’s Assembly polls, slated to be held on 21 October, a multicornered contest. In Maharashtra, too, the Assembly polls for 288 seats will be held simultaneously with Haryana.
The new entrants in Haryana include Dushyant Chautala’s Jannayak Janata Party (Jjp)—which was created last year after a vertical split in the Indian National Lok Dal (Inld)—arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Yogendra Yadav’s Swaraj India.
After its inception in 2014, the Dushyant Chautala-led JJP is going to gauge its political strength in the Haryana Assembly polls. The party has already announced that it will contest on all the 90 Assembly seats of the state.
Devender Kadyan, who is a JJP candidate from Panipat (rural), told The Sunday Guardian: “Since inception, the JJP has worked hard for strengthening its organisational capacity. With the help of party workers and the organisation, we will contest on all the 90 Assembly seats of the state. We have been following the ideals of the late Chaudhury Devi Lal and will continue to fight for the cause of the people of Haryana.” JJP had already declared its first list of seven candidates on 12 September. Most of the candidates on the list were earlier part of the INLD and had contested previous Assembly polls in the state.
Ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, the JJP and AAP had formed an alliance, but both the parties together failed to make any impact in the Lok Sabha polls held earlier this year. In the Assembly polls, both parties have decided to contest separately and are pitted against each other.
The Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP has already witnessed an embarrassing defeat in the last Lok Sabha polls and now the party is trying hard to be relevant in Haryana.
The AAP is working in the districts of Haryana in a very low-key manner and till now, the party has announced 25 candidates for the Assembly polls. The state unit is singlehandedly being led by Navin Jaihind and senior leaders have so far remained aloof from the campaign.
The prospects of AAP in Haryana are already dim and, to aggravate matters further, Yogendra Yadav’s Swaraj India has also entered the poll fray.
Deepak Lamba, general secretary of Swaraj India, said: “We aim to contest on all 90 Assembly seats of Haryana only if we get good candidates, as we are here to provide alternative politics that is not driven by money. We have been agitating for the rights of farmers and our leader Yogendra Yadav has been aggressively campaigning to give hikes in minimum support price (MSP) to the farmers for their produce. For our party, unemployment is the biggest issue in the scheduled elections. As per a CMIE (Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy) report, in Haryana, the unemployment rate is 28% against the national average of 8%.” “Swaraj India’s aim is to provide alternative politics in Haryana. No doubt, we have scarce resources needed for power politics, but we are not here to run politics by using money and muscle power. For example, we have so far announced 17 candidates and each one has been associated with some or other good work. One of our candidates, 22-year old Tejpal who will be the candidate from Nangal Chaudhary, has been fighting against illegal stone crushers in the area. Our candidate Madhu Anand has fought for the justice of a girl who was allegedly molested by a former DGP of the state and the issue had hit the headlines across the country,” Lamba told The Sunday Guardian.
Similarly, in Maharashtra, the Prakash Ambedkar-led Vanchit Bahujan Aaghadi (VBA) is in fray to challenge the traditional lions of the state BJP-SHIV Sena alliance and the Congress-ncp alliance. However, the VBA wanted to form an alliance with NCP or Congress, but failed to ink a pact and is now trying to lure the All India Majlis-e-ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM).
“In case the VBA fails to forge an alliance with the Ncp-congress, the VBA alone will contest on 43 Assembly seats,” a source close to the VBA chief told The Sunday Guardian.
Data of the recently concluded Lok Sabha polls suggests that the VBA managed get a significant chunk of the vote share in some crucial seats in Maharashtra. The party is getting encouraging support in some pockets of Maharashtra from its core voter base—the Dalits.
Despite the challenge put by the old and new political outfits in both the states, the Bjp-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) seems way ahead of its opponents. In Haryana, the Bjp-led NDA has set the target of winning more than 75 seats, while in Maharashtra, the BJP-SENA alliance is confident of winning the magic majority. As expected, the launch of Dr Subramanian Swamy’s book, Reset: Regaining India’s Economic Legacy, was a well attended one. Seeing the overcrowded auditorium, Natwar Singh asked Dr Swamy if he had under-estimated his own importance. To which, Swamy quipped, “Maybe I believed what the BJP keeps saying about me.” It is no secret that Swamy has his fair share of detractors within the party. But, as a beaming Kapish Mishra, the publisher of the book, pointed out, it’s very rare that he comes to a book launch with the first print of the book already sold. When BJP MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar was a 17-year-old, joining the BJP was clearly not part of his plans. For in his
12th standard he had reached out across the border to the physicist and Nobel Prize laureate Abdus Salam, to which he got a rather interesting reply and one that he still cherishes for its pinned on his Twitter handle. Salam wrote that while he was glad to hear about Rajeev’s resolution, “I must warn you of the frustrations ahead, particularly when you find Nature parsimonious in yielding her secrets and how painful research is or can be at times”. Even if Salam was not valued in Pakistan, he is given due credit across the border.