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Ecostani | Why the Congress may not go for the kill in Haryana
The Congress not having a clear majority may be a reason why the party is not staking claim to form the government.
The Congress and the Jannayak Janata Party (JJP) on Thursday asked Haryana governor Bandaru Dattatreya for a floor test in the state assembly after three independent MLAs withdrew support to the Nayab Singh Saini-led Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) government.
The JJP, which has 10 MLAs in the 90 member-Haryana assembly, has also announced support to the Congress, if it stakes claim to form the government. So far, the Congress, which has 30 MLAs, has not staked claim to form the government even though on paper it has the support of at least 43 MLAs including from the JJP.
The strength of the Haryana assembly was reduced to 88 when former chief minister, Manohar Lal Khattar, and Rania MLA Ranjit Chautala resigned to contest the Lok Sabha polls. Hence, the majority mark is 45 and both the BJP and Congress have the support of 43 MLAs. Two independent MLAs have so far been equidistance from both the BJP and the Congress.
Voting for two assembly by-polls along with that of Lok Sabha constituencies will take place on May 25 in the state.
The Congress not having a clear majority may be a reason why the party is not staking claim to form the government. A senior Congress leader said they were also apprehensive about whether all 10 JJP MLAs would support the Congress or not. The fear is that if the floor test is carried out, some JJP MLAs may support the BJP against the party whip. Moreover, the Congress is apprehensive that some of its MLAs may also switch sides and join the BJP.
The Congress is also not in a position to move a no-confidence motion as Haryana assembly rules do not allow two trust motions within six months.
On March 13, Congress leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda had moved a no-confidence motion against Saini, who had the support of 48 MLAs. At the time, the BJP had 41 MLAs, and received support from six independent MLAs and one from the Haryana Lokhit Party (HLP), to register 47 votes. The 10 JJP MLAs had abstained from the voting, helping the BJP to win the trust vote easily.
In the present situation, the BJP has claimed that apart from 43, it has the support of three JJP MLAs whose names it did not disclose. The JJP had issued notices to three MLAs for “anti-party” activities when they spoke against party leader and former deputy chief minister, Dushyant Chautala. These three MLAs have so far not revealed their stand. Khattar, in fact, told reporters on Tuesday that they were confident of proving the majority if the governor asked them to do so as they have the support of MLAs from other parties.
Hooda admitted to reporters on Wednesday that it cannot bring a trust vote against Saini because of the rules and asked Saini to prove his majority on the floor of the house on “moral” grounds. On Thursday, the party wrote to the governor asking for an appointment to discuss the prevailing “political crisis” in the state. The JJP also asked the governor to call a state assembly session to conduct the trust vote saying that Saini has lost the majority.
Unlike any previous instance of the opposition moving in fast gear to topple the incumbent government, the Congress and the JJP have been slow, possibly because the two parties are wary of each other.
On Tuesday evening, three independent MLAs also extended support to the Congress. The Congress, however, did not write to the governor seeking a trust vote immediately.
The Congress and the JJP seem to be waiting for the other to take the initiative and are not willing to break the status quo unilaterally by going to the governor.
On Wednesday, for example, Hooda asked Chautala to take the initiative to parade his 10 MLAs before the governor and seek a trust vote. “After he takes his MLAs to the governor's house, I will send ours to Raj Bhawan led by MLA Bharat Bhushan Batra,” Hooda said. And, on Thursday, Chautala asked Hooda to join him in parading the MLAs before the governor. Hooda did not respond.
In the absence of either party ready to make a show of strength, the governor may not be inclined to call the chief minister to prove his majority.
Even if the Congress and JJP MLAs are paraded before the governor, there is no surety over Dattatreya asking Saini to prove his majority within a certain timeframe. The Governor, who is the ceremonial head of the legislative, is not bound by rules to decide within a certain timeframe on the claims of the ruling party having lost its majority.
The Supreme Court in separate rulings has said that the governor can take “reasonable” time to decide on such issues without defining the reasonable time.
From the sequence of events since Tuesday, it appears that Congress may not be much interested in the Saini government falling before the Lok Sabha polls on May 25. The BJP holds all 10 Lok Sabha seats in Haryana and the Congress is aiming to wrest at least half of these seats from the ruling party. Congress leaders aware of the development said that the party does not want to get involved in government formation during the Lok Sabha campaign period but wants to extract as much political mileage as possible from the current uncertainty.
So far, Hooda has demanded President’s Rule in the state but refrained from staking claim to form the government.
“We know forming a government with 30 MLAs for less than six months would be a risky affair. We cannot trust the JJP which was part of the BJP government for four-and-half years,” said a senior Congress leader who asked not to be named.
The state assembly elections in Haryana are slated for December 2024. The Congress believes that the MLAs leaving the BJP camp would help the party in the assembly polls. And, for that to happen, the party is willing to wait.
Chetan Chauhan, national affairs editor, analyses the most important environment and political story in the country this week
ABOUT THE AUTHORChetan ChauhanChetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More
