Haryana polls: BJP banks on new leadership and core voters

New Delhi: The BJP is preparing for a third term in Haryana after polls were announced for the state. The party relies on Nayab Saini as chief minister and core voters. To get support from the most backward, BJP replaced two-term CM Manohar Lal with Nayab Saini in March.

"The change of leadership augurs well for the BJP. Saini has been accepted as a leader by all the communities. His approach towards governance and easy access has made him very popular and we are definitely going to benefit from this in the assembly elections," Satish Poonia, BJP in-charge of Haryana, told ET.

In 2019, with 40 seats, the BJP fell short of the majority level of 45 in the 90-member assembly and established a coalition government with the Jananayak Janata Party (JJP). Congress won 30 seats in 2019.


The coalition with the JJP broke before the Lok Sabha elections, and the party will run again on its own.

In the recent Lok Sabha elections, the BJP lost five seats to the Congress, which could be a source of concern for the party ahead of the assembly elections. However, the BJP leadership believes that the situation will be different in the assembly elections. "Everyone predicted that Congress would sweep the LS elections. So we stopped them at five. Even in the LS, our assembly performance was superior to Congress," Poonia says.

Extrapolating the LS votes to the assembly segments, the BJP won 44 seats while the Congress won 42.

The data suggests a close race in Haryana, but the BJP leadership is confident of winning a majority on its own. "We have completed our preparation for all 90 assembly seats. "CM Saini has already toured close to 50% of the seats," Poonia added.

The party intends to unveil its initial list of 25 candidates by the end of next week, following the CEC meeting in Delhi. The list will include A and C category seats. A category includes seats where the BJP is certain of winning the election. C category seats are those in which the party lost by a smaller margin.

Entire focus of the party is on consolidating the core vote bank of Bania, upper caste, non-Jat OBCs and a section of SC voters.