How BJP hat-trick will echo beyond Haryana. Explained in 4 points

In Haryana, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) snatched a win from the jaws of the Congress, and against all predictions. Most exit polls suggested an astounding win for Congress in Haryana because the BJP was not only facing a 10-year anti-incumbency, but also had to deal with a section of disgruntled people. However, the BJP sprung a surprise, and registered its most impressive victory in Haryana. No party has ever won a third term in the agrarian state.
The results are set to boost the BJP’s confidence, as it was the biggest test after the 2024 Lok Sabha election. In the general election, though the BJP remained the biggest party, its number of seats came down.
This is what the Haryana hat-trick means for the BJP nationally.
The narrative of the beginning of the slide of the BJP and the coming of age for Rahul Gandhi will be reset now.
This narrative was built after the BJP went to the Lok Sabha election with the battle cry of 400+ seats for the NDA. Getting 240 seats, it failed to form a simple majority on its own, and had to rely on its allies, especially the TDP and the JD(U).
Had the Congress won the election in Haryana, it would have built on the party’s resurgence narrative, and given the Opposition a boost.
The immediate impact of the Haryana result will be seen in the upcoming assembly elections in Maharashtra and Jharkhand.
The victory in Haryana will boost the BJP workers who were disheartened after the Lok Sabha polls, especially in states like Haryana and Maharashtra.
It will also make the INDIA bloc rethink its election strategies and how it shares its seats.
The BJP cadre in these states might feel assured of its party’s ability to gauge the caste equations. It will help restore the faith of BJP members in the party’s ability to bag a win.
The Delhi Assembly is also expected to go to polls by February 2025, a state where the Congress has drawn a nil in the last two Assembly elections. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), a big player in Delhi and INDIA bloc constituent, is likely to negotiate hard with the Congress, especially after the Congress went solo in Haryana.
While the results in Haryana show not much promise for the Congress, the BJP would hope for a contagion effect in Delhi.
It was also believed that the farmers’ agitation against the now-repealed three farm laws and the demand for legal guarantee for minimum support price (MSP) for crops would go against the BJP. That is because Haryana is an agrarian state.
The Haryana election result shows that the BJP wasn’t impacted by the farmers’ issue.
Gurnam Singh Chaduni, a farmer leader who was at the forefront of the 2020–21 farmers’ agitation, lost his deposit in Pehowa seat of Haryana.
The Bharatiya Kisan Union leader could only manage 1,170 votes in the contest in the seat which Congress won against the BJP candidate with a slim margin of 6,553 votes.
A big chunk of Maharashtra is agrarian, though issues there are different from Haryana’s.
While the Congress focused on consolidating Jats, who it felt were disillusioned with the BJP since the farmers’ protests, the BJP focused on mobilising non-Jats. The BJP’s focus on ’36 biradri’, included reaching out to several communities.
The Jat mobilisation by the Congress saw a counter-consolidation of several castes and communities, including Dalits, in favour of the BJP. Dalits form 22% of Haryana’s population.
In the Lok Sabha election, Dalits voted decisively for the Congress. The party’s ‘samvidhan khatre main hai’ (Constitution in danger) slogan struck a chord with Dalit voters in Haryana. In the more localised Haryana election, the Constitution wasn’t much of an issue and the Nayab Singh Saini government’s schemes wooed a section of Dalits back.
The Dalit vote split in the Assembly election, resulting in several close contests. The BJP also won nine out of 17 Scheduled Caste reserved seats.
The BJP has won 20 out of the 25 OBC-dominated seats (seats with a non-Jat OBC population.) Even Jats did not completely turn away from the BJP. The Jat vote has been split equally between Congress and BJP. Both won 14 each of the 30 Jat seats in Haryana.
What the return of a section of Dalit voters indicates is that with the right focus on addressing local issues, voter blocs can be wooed back. This gives the BJP hope in Maharsahtra.
The Congress faced a whitewash in Gurugram as the BJP won all the four Assembly seats. This was a better performance than in 2019 when the BJP won three of the four seats. It wrested Badshapur, the largest constituency in Haryana, from the Congress this time.
While the BJP had lost other cyber hubs — Bengaluru in Karnataka and Hyderabad in Telangana, winning Gurugram was crucial for it. Gurugram in the National Capital Region (NCR) is an important sea as it generates substantial revenue for Haryana, with excise revenue of Rs 2,600 crore in 2022-23, making it a critical economic asset.
This also resets the narrative that all major tech hubs were slipping away from the BJP’s hands.
The sweep of Gurgaon and Badshapur shows that urban voters remain loyal to the BJP.
So, winning the election has given the BJP a weapon to counter the Congress’s resurgence narrative, confidence to go to polls in three states, and reiterated that its ’36 biradri’ focus can achieve even the impossible, like in Haryana.