Calculative vs emotive campaigns that may have swung the vote in Haryana
In Haryana, BJP's strategic campaign outperformed Congress's emotional appeal in elections, leading to significant losses for the latter amid internal strife.
A political storm broke over Haryana one balmy March morning earlier this year, when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) announced that it would snap its five-year-old alliance with the Jannayak Janata Party (JJP) and also replace its veteran chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar with his protege, first-time parliamentarian Nayab Singh Saini.

The move sparked turmoil as an upset JJP signalled that it was anyway planning to leave the alliance because of anger among its main constituency, Jats. The results of the Lok Sabha polls, where the BJP underperformed and lost five seats to the Congress, added more fuel to the buzz that the BJP was slipping in Haryana. Still, the party went about its business as usual — even as it ran an unusually low-key campaign, but one that bore the mark of its characteristic planning and meticulous implementation of central leadership decisions.
In contrast, the Congress built an emotive campaign that hinged on community honour — of farmers, of wrestlers, and of families who took pride in sending their children to the army. It said it was speaking for “jawan, kisan, pehelwan” (soldier, farmer, wrestler). The party believed that its use of emotion would add wind to its sails and secure it a rare head-to-head victory against the BJP. In this quest, the national leadership sometimes was happy to let the regional leaders (read the Hoodas) take centre stage, even at the cost of other rival state leaders (read Kumari Selja).
Read more: Historic Haryana hat-trick for BJP, INDIA begins new innings in J&K
How did this unlikely battle between a strategic campaign and an emotive one pan out? As electronic voting machines were opened on Tuesday, the BJP’s model of running a disciplined campaign based on cold, calculated strategy triumphed as the party broke new ground in a state it had already ruled for a decade
Take leadership and ticket selection.
The BJP first replaced its CM with a relative newcomer, Saini, but one who could make a legitimate claim to having a fresh slate. During his six months at the helm, Saini signed off on a slew on populist measures — these included government jobs, plots to families below the poverty line, free bus travel for such groups, and clearance for unauthorised colonies — underlined how the BJP government had given out government jobs without community favouritism, and spoke endlessly about his background as an other backward classes (OBC) leader. Strategically, the party restricted Khattar’s campaigning radius and allowed Saini to crisscross the state.
Then, the party dropped a third of its sitting lawmakers in a second attempt to shed anti-incumbency and gave tickets to nearly two dozen fresh faces. It tried to revive its broad-based social coalition built in opposition to the Jats by strategically giving enough room to OBCs, Dalits and “upper castes”.
In contrast, the Congress chose to repose faith in former two-term CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda. It rebuffed calls for an alliance, unwittingly strengthening the perception that Jats would consolidate power if the Congress came back. The party refused to drop most of its sitting lawmakers, ignoring local anti-incumbency, only to see nearly half of them lose.
Take discipline and dissension.
The BJP took care to project a united house. Stung by its Lok Sabha performance, the party was careful in dealing with dissension that erupted after the announcement of the first round of tickets. Despite a few bigwigs publicly rebelling — the most prominent of them, former state minister Savitri Jindal won from Hisar — the BJP spent hours and manpower in placating many of them and convincing them to take back nominations. The campaign was headlined by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah, who drove home the message that the BJP’s governance model was not dependent on caste considerations.
The Congress was the opposite. Almost immediately after the elections were announced, a feud broke out between Hooda and Selja, who stayed away from the campaign for almost two weeks. Even as rebellion brewed, the Congress central leadership appeared hesitant to step in and bring together leaders such as Selja, Hooda and Randeep Surjewala on the same platform regularly. It didn’t see that the treatment of Selja was also being read as a portent of things to come by smaller groups fearful of social dominance. The party appeared to have been caught unawares by the mushrooming number of independents and smaller parties such as the Indian National Lok Dal, which hived away anti-BJP votes and helped the incumbent. The Congress lost at least 17 seats due to spoilers, an HT analysis found.
And take campaign narrative.
The BJP mounted a traditional campaign that focussed on everyday tangible promises made to the electorate. It stayed away from high-voltage communal rhetoric and instead underlined its welfare outreach and agenda for smaller and backward groups. It stressed on the thousands of government jobs given to young men and women, while simultaneously allowing Saini to build some distance from the anger that dogged his predecessor Khattar.
The Congress’s response to this was more emotional appeals. It believed that there was a groundswell in favour of the party on the back of the protests by wrestlers against sexual harassment, by farmers against the Centre’s policies, and by young men against the Agnipath short-service recruitment scheme in the armed forces. The Congress even nominated two-time World Championship medallist Vinesh Phogat from Julana in the belief that her candidature would galvanise the party and the electorate.
But in the melee of this high-octane campaign, the party could not read the shifting sands of caste. It failed to realise that these protests were being read by large segments of the electorate as being issues that exclusively concerned Jats. It could not see that these issues, emotive as they might be, were not pan-Haryana questions that animated all groups.
In India, the adage goes, elections are run on emotion. But like most adages, it should not be taken too seriously. Strategy and execution are just as important. This time, the Congress may have realised it too late.
