Five years after the BJP swept Haryana in the Lok Sabha elections, winning all 10 constituencies in the state, based on support from all major communities in the state, except Muslims, the Congress maintained the balance between all the influential castes in the state in its list of candidates released on Thursday.
The Congress is contesting nine of the Haryana constituencies while one, Kurukshetra, is with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). The party, yet to announce its candidate from Gurugram, has given two tickets each to Jats, Dalits, and Other Backward Classes (OBCs). One ticket each has been given to the Punjabi and Brahmin communities.
The candidates from the Scheduled Castes (SCs) are Kumari Selja (Sirsa) and Varun Chaudhary (Ambala). Deepender Hooda (Rohtak) and Jai Prakash (Hisar) are the Jats on the list while the two OBC candidates are Rao Dan Singh (Bhiwani-Mahendragarh) and Mahendra Pratap (Faridabad). Satpal Brahmachari (Sonipat) is the Bramhin nominee and Divyanshu Buddhiraja (Karnal) is the candidate from the Punjabi community.
Against the BJP’s Faridabad candidate Krishan Pal Gurjar, who is from the Gurjar community, the Congress has fielded Mahendra Pratap who is also a Gurjar. Rao Dan Singh who comes from the Ahir community is the party’s choice to take on the BJP’s Jat candidate Dharambir in Bhiwani.
In Sirsa and Ambala, which are SC-reserved seats, the BJP has fielded Ashok Tanwar and Banto Kataria.
Both Rohtak and Hisar are Jat-dominated constituencies but have significant Punjabi and Brahmin communities. In Rohtak, the BJP’s Arvind Sharma, a Brahmin, will take on Deepender Hooda. Hisar will see a Jat versus Jat contest between BJP’s Ranjit Singh and Jai Prakash. In Sonipat, where the BJP has fielded Brahmin candidate Mohan Lal Badoli, the Congress has fielded Satpal Brahmachari who is also from the community.
In 2019, the Congress fielded four Jat candidates — Bhupinder Hooda in Sonipat, Deepender in Rohtak, Nirmal Singh in Kurukshetra and Shruti Choudhry in Bhiwani-Mahendragarh constituencies. Selja and Tanwar were the two candidates from Ambala and Sirsa. Both are now contesting against each other in Sirsa. Others include Bhavya Bishnoi in Hisar who was fielded to cater to the Bishnoi vote bank; Avtar Singh Bhadana, a non-Jat in Faridabad; Kuldeep Sharma a Punjabi in Karnal; and Capt Ajay Yadav in Gurgaon fielded to reach out to the Yadav vote bank.
As per the 2011 Census, SCs constitute 20.1% of Haryana’s population while OBCs make up 40.94% of the population. The Jat community constitutes approximately 27% of the population.
According to Lokniti, a research institute of the Delhi-based Centre for Developing Societies (CSDS), the BJP got 74% of the vote share as compared to Congress’ 18% among the “upper castes”. Among Jats, it received 50% of the votes as compared to 33% of the Congress. Among the OBCs, the BJP got 73% of the votes, while the Congress managed to get 22% of the votes. The BJP got 58% of the votes among SCs, while the Congress secured 28% of the votes in the community. The Congress got 86% of Muslim votes, which has been its traditional vote bank, while the BJP got only 14% of the votes in the community.
In 2019, only Rohtak saw a close fight, with the BJP’s Arvind Sharma defeating Deepender Hooda by just 7,503 votes. In the remaining seats, the BJP secured wins with high margins. In Karnal, Sanjay Bhatia won by more than 6.8 lakh votes, while in Faridabad Krishan Pal Gurjar won by more than 6.38 lakh votes.
