Ahead of the impending Haryana Assembly elections, an angry BJP accused the Kuldip Bishnoi-headed Haryana Janhit Congress (Bhajanlal) — after the latter broke its alliance with it on Thursday — of working to divide the anti-incumbency vote against the Bhupinder Hooda-led Congress government in the State, even calling the HJP the Congress’s B team.
For the beleaguered Congress, facing almost daily desertions from its ranks in the state, the coming apart of the three year old BJP-HJP alliance is the first glimmer of light in the bleak political landscape of Haryana: senior party sources said with reports suggesting that the HJP is now likely to join forces with former Congress leader Venod Sharma's Jan Chetna Party and perhaps even the Bahujan Samaj Party, now headed by another former Congress leader, Arvind Sharma for the coming elections. “The ground situation is now not so bad,” a senior Congress leader said, adding, that the division of votes could well block the BJP’s ambitions of winning Haryana.
Putting on a brave face after the HJC broke with it on the issue of sharing of seats, BJP spokesman Shahnawaz Hussain told journalists here, “There is a wave for change in Haryana and that change will be provided by the BJP.” Simultaneously, he accused the party of becoming the Congress’s B team and working to split the anti-incumbency vote.
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Mr. Hussain said that the party offered the HJC assembly seats in proportion to the constituencies they had shared in the recent Lok Sabha elections, “but the party betrayed the people of Haryana and broke the alliance”.
Of the 10 Lok Sabha seats the alliance had contested in the state, the BJP won eight, while the HJC had lost the two seats it contested. Mr. Bishnoi himself lost to Dushyant Hooda of the Indian National Lok Dal in Hissar sisar, while in Sirsa, the HJC came third after the INLD and the Congress.