The results of assembly elections in Jammu Kashmir and Haryana will come today. However, the exit poll projections that came after the completion of Haryana’s voting on October 5 have indicated the direction of the results. Keep in mind that no matter how wrong the exit poll estimates prove to be, it rarely happens that their direction is wrong. They lose in number of seats, but usually let us know who is ahead and who is lagging behind. So, he has also told this about Jammu Kashmir and Haryana. But that is not a matter of debate now because what will happen will be revealed by 10 am on Tuesday, October 8.
Apart from the results, there are many messages from the elections in these two states, which need to be seen in the broader context. The issues raised in this election, the contradictions of the parties and the politics of subtle managements can prove to give a new direction to the future politics of these two states and its impact can also be felt on the politics of the country.
First of all, if we talk about Haryana, the message of strengthening the roots of women and Dalit politics there has emerged from this election. Keep in mind that Haryana is a state with deep prejudice against women and the same thinking is visible towards Dalits also. But this time the importance of these two groups has been emphasized afresh by the discussion they have had. This time in the elections, 1,031 candidates have contested from all the 90 seats of Haryana, out of which the number of women is only 101. That means there are less than 10 percent candidates from half the population. According to law, it should have been 50 percent, but if both BJP and Congress are committed to the Nari Shakti Vandan Act passed last year, then it should have been at least 33 percent. But the record of both these parties in giving tickets to women is also very bad. Despite this, the silver lining is that Olympian wrestler Vinesh Phogat was discussed throughout the election.
Keep in mind that women’s wrestling in Haryana starts from the family of Mahavir Singh Phogat. In a patriarchal society like Haryana, he started wrestling his daughters and by enduring social and government opposition and taunts at many levels, he made his daughters successful at the national and international level. Vinesh Phogat is not his daughter but is a member of his family.
Vinesh Phogat, who was deprived of a medal in the Olympics due to technical reasons, was the main issue of this election. The way he was welcomed on his return from Paris and the way the women as well as men of Haryana supported his entry into politics is a sign of a new beginning. Like wrestling, Vinesh has created a clean and wide road for women in politics too, on which it is expected that a large number of women will walk and succeed.
The second message of Haryana elections is for the Dalit community to express its ambition to share in power. Till now the Dalit community is taken as vote bank only around 21 percent. This is the first time that it has been openly discussed that a Dalit can become the Chief Minister. Kumari Selja first openly expressed her ambition and then BJP made a big strategic mistake, which made it an issue. This was an internal matter of Congress, but to take advantage of it, BJP started discussing it everywhere. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi raised the issue of Selja from the stage everywhere, former Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar even invited him to join BJP. Former Union Minister Smriti Irani held a press conference and said that Congress should declare Kumari Selja as a contender for the post of Chief Minister.
Congress got the electoral benefit of this entire episode but a big benefit was that the Dalit community was no longer just a vote bank but was also considered a contender for power. Apart from the Selja episode, the way the Indian National Lok Dal coordinated with the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Jannayak Janata Party with the Azad Samaj Party and the way Congress brought back Ashok Tanwar just before the voting, all these also proved the political importance of the Dalit community. This election has proved that the Dalit community will have to be given a share in power and the incidents of atrocities on Dalits will become history.
As far as Jammu and Kashmir is concerned, a trend has been seen emerging from the Lok Sabha elections. That tendency is for radical forces to join the democratic process. Earlier, fundamentalist and separatist forces used to announce boycott of elections and due to that there was very less voting in rural areas. This did not happen in the Lok Sabha elections and the same trend is visible in the Assembly elections also. The perception about democracy in Kashmir has changed. The result of this was the victory of suspected terrorist engineer Rashid in the Baramulla Lok Sabha elections.
This time Rashid’s Awami Ittehad Party has contested elections at many places. The banned Jamaat-e-Islami has supported several independent candidates. At the same time, in the exit poll results, others have been predicted to get a dozen or more seats. If this happens then there will be a need to observe this phenomenon very closely, understand it and assess its impact. Because there seems to be an emerging tendency to adopt the path of democracy instead of violence to achieve fundamentalist and separatist goals.
Elections in Jammu and Kashmir are usually not face to face. That’s why this time, despite Congress and National Conference fighting in coordination, the election remained multi-cornered. Apart from the Congress alliance, there is competition from BJP, PDP and others. That means the election is four-cornered. In many places, BJP has made the elections quadrangular as an experiment. In this sequence, she is seen creating many Bhasmasuras. How she will handle them in future remains to be seen. On the other hand, this time the elections in Haryana seem to be one-on-one instead of multi-cornered. Often the third force is also strong there and others also get a good amount of votes as the fourth force.
In the last election i.e. in 2019, others got 18 percent votes. Before that in 2014, others had got 21 percent votes. Think about the phenomenon of people other than BJP, Congress and INLD getting so many votes! This time everything has changed. This time there is a contest between Congress and BJP. If the situation of the third force i.e. INLD and JJP is very bad, then there will be a big decline in the votes of the fourth force i.e. others. The election results of these two states will also test the status of the satraps installed on the throne by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the basis of their loyalty to him. Failure of all of them could mark the beginning of a new era in BJP’s politics.