Opinion | Haryana Results: The Great BJP Turnaround and Congress’ Refusal to Learn from Mistakes

Besides the fact that the Haryana Assembly election exit polls and actual result — along with a fiasco of a slightly lesser Richter reading in Lok Sabha 2024 — has thrown their careers into existential crisis, psephologists should reflect on a particular aspect of their analysis.

Most Indian pollsters believe that the BJP tends to do better in the central Lok Sabha elections in a particular state than in local polls there. They cite instances like Bihar 2014 Lok Sabha and 2015 Assembly, Bengal 2019 Lok Sabha and 2021 Assembly.

This Haryana election has turned that on its head as well.

Voters are perhaps realising that they got taken in Rahul Gandhi’s caste-led, dodgy sales pitch that Narendra Modi will scrap reservations, and that the backwards must get their due based on their numbers.

The Dalits, apart from belatedly realising that the Modi government has no such intention and Rahul had spun the narrative from thin air, have watched in dismay how their leader Selja Kumari was treated by the Hoodas and anti-Dalit utterances of certain Congress leaders.

Other castes have also wondered that if the Congress scion is such a great social justice warrior, why did he offer Jats — a powerful, aggressive, and vocal community — a free hand to dominate all other castes and communities?

The Congress seemed to be entirely unaware that Indians no longer want any one dominant, aggressive group — whether Jats or Yadavs — to corner power.

Rahul Gandhi’s relentless attempts to incite OBCs did not bring any returns. In the Lok Sabha election results in June, the Congress had finished with half a per cent more vote share than the BJP in Haryana. But in the Assembly election, the BJP ended up almost a percentage higher, going against all predictions.

The voters might also have resented seeing Rahul Gandhi and Congress’s arrogance peak despite getting just 99 out of 543 Lok Sabha seats. The party started behaving as if it had won the general elections and started treating allies with a certain condescension and indifference.

In spite of proffering to do politics of love, Rahul Gandhi’s language and demeanour with political opponents and non-lackey journalists were constantly brusque and acerbic, bordering on the arrogant.

The Congress got so complacent after a relatively slightly better show in the general elections that journalists and intellectuals who support the party started writing off the BJP and PM Narendra Modi.

It wasted an enormous amount of time and money on YouTubers and influencers instead of focusing on quiet and unsexy organisation building. The party started believing that setting the narrative, false or true, is its ticket to winning.

While Rahul Gandhi’s aggressive attacks on Hindutva, Muslims have consolidated behind the Congress. But that has also set off a quiet reverse polarisation among Hindus. The Congress government’s serious appeasement of Muslims in Karnataka, for instance, has sent a message out nationwide.

It seems the BJP has learnt its lesson from its rocky victory in the Lok Sabha elections, but the Congress smugly refused to take any learning from its slightly reduced loss. In terms of morale and momentum, it may take the Congress quite long to recover from the Haryana debacle.

Abhijit Majumder is a senior journalist. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.