From emerging as a kingmaker in the 2019 Haryana Assembly polls to facing a potential wipeout five years later, the Jannayak Janta Party has witnessed a dramatic fall in its electoral fortune after its alliance with the BJP ended in March.
Party leader and former deputy chief minister Dushyant Chautala is set to face a humiliating defeat in the polls as he trails in the fifth spot in the Uchana Kalan Assembly segment — a seat that he won in 2019.
In 2019, the JJP won 10 of the 90 assembly seats, but it emerged as a kingmaker and forged a post-poll alliance with the BJP, which had fallen six short of a simple majority after winning 40 seats.
The Ajay Singh Chautala-led party, which was born after a vertical split in the parent outfit Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) in December 2018 owing to a family feud, saw a sudden rise in its graph and abrupt decline once its alliance with the BJP ended in March this year.
The alliance fell apart after the BJP effected a change in its leadership, replacing Manohar Lal Khattar as chief minister with Nayab Singh Saini.
In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the JJP fielded candidates on all 10 seats but could not win even one. The JJP candidates faced severe drubbing, losing their security deposits.
After its state unit chief Nishan Singh quit the party, seven of its 10 legislators switched over to either the Congress or the BJP.
Even a pre-poll alliance with the Azad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram) to target Dalit voters in Haryana seems to not have reaped dividends for the JJP.
After its tie-up with the BJP in 2019, Chautala had to do the balancing act to ensure the smooth running of the government as his support base was against the saffron party.
Chautala, 36, the great-grandson of former deputy prime minister Devi Lal, had last month predicted that no single party would be able to cross the 40-seat mark in the assembly elections.
”No single party can form a government on its own. There are chances that nobody crosses the 40-seat mark. So, there will be parties with numbers and some Independents too who will win,” former deputy chief minister Chautala told PTI then.
In 2017, as the country’s youngest MP then, Chautala had attracted eyeballs when he reached Parliament to attend the winter session riding a green-coloured tractor to protest tweaking of certain rules relating to the Motor Vehicles Act which, he had claimed, would add to farmers’ woes.
At that time, Chautala was a Hisar MP from the INLD before its vertical split in 2018 leading to the formation of the JJP.
During the farmers’ agitation against the now repealed farm laws, Chautala came under intense pressure from various quarters, including the Congress, which demanded his party withdraw support to the ”anti-farmer” BJP.
Chautala, however, made it clear that the Centre should talk to the farmers and resolve the issue.
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