Chandigarh: In a well-thought-out political move, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chose fresh faces as Chief Ministers in the three states where it emerged victorious and the party wants to play cards to outsmart Congress and other rival parties. As per sources, it is expected to play the same card in the Haryana elections as well.
The party chose Other Backward Class (OBC) candidate Mohan Yadav as CM in Madhya Pradesh, while in Chattisgarh, tribal candidate Vishnu Deo Sai, was sworn in. Rajasthan, on the other hand, got a Brahmin candidate, Bhajan Lal Sharma as the CM. Thus, the BJP played the game of checks and balances to appease vote bank politics along the lines of caste equations.
In Rajasthan, Dalit candidate Prem Chand Bairwa and Diya Kumari (Brahmin) were appointed Deputy CMs. At the same time, in Madhya Pradesh, Jagdish Devda (Brahmin) and Rajendra Shukla (Dalit) were sworn in as Deputy CMs. In Chhattisgarh, the first Deputy CM Vijay Sharma is a Brahmin and the second Arun Sao is an OBC member.
The Haryana Scenario: Going by the statistics, the BJP does not have a strong hold over the Jat Vote Bank in the state with a meagre 17 per cent share. The question remains if the party will be successful in gaining votes from the other sections in the state.
The Brahmin, Bania and Sikh communities have a thirty per cent vote bank in Haryana while the OBC (Ahir and Yadav) category has a 24 per cent share.
At the same time, more than 21 per cent vote bank is constituted by the Scheduled Castes (SC), and the rest belongs to Gurjars and other communities.
Will Haryana benefit from BJP's stake in three states? Political expert Dhirendra Awasthi thinks that the BJP is often accused of appeasing the Brahmins.
It was an open secret that most Brahmins cast their votes in favour of the BJP, but the party never appointed Brahmin candidates to major posts. However, with the recent Assembly Elections, the BJP broke this myth and appointed a Brahmin Chief Minister and two Brahmin Deputy CMs across three states. Awasthi opined that the party's victory in Haryana will ultimately benefit the state.
Political experts say that it is quite evident that the BJP will try to tap the OBC vote bank in South Haryana as the community has a huge dominance in the region. Simultaneously, the party will also try to appease the Brahmin vote bank.
The BJP has further increased the stature of CM Manohar Lal Khattar by making him an observer in MP, giving out a strong message to its opponents.
'Trying to create multiple vote banks simultaneously': Professor Gurmeet Singh, another political expert said that BJP's methodology in appointing CMs has solved caste equations and has weakened the stakes for the opposition.
The BJP is aware of its Jat vote bank in Haryana but is not ready to cut a sorry figure for that. Hence, the focus on the vote banks of other castes such as Brahmins, Punjabis, OBCs, and Dalits to win the polls. It is expected that the union of several castes in the three states that BJP emerged victorious in will serve as a boon for Haryana.
Also Read:
