State’s larger caste matrix swung the vote in Haryana
Haryana's 2024 election saw BJP capitalise on caste dynamics, countering Jat dominance and winning key votes from OBCs and Dalits.
The year 1968 marked a watershed moment in Haryana’s history. That year, Chaudhary Bansi Lal ascended to the chair of chief minister in a state that was still in its infancy, thus marking the beginning of an era of Jat domination. Though it was interspersed with periods of non-Jat leaders at the helm, the dominant community that comprises around a fourth of the state held the CM’s chair for 33 of 57 years.
Both that domination — and the response to it — were behind the improbable victory the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) pulled off on Tuesday in Haryana, besting anti-incumbency and posting its best seat tally and vote share. At its core was India’s oldest fault line — caste.
It shaped the 2024 verdict in three ways, linked to three different communities.
First, the Jats. Anger among the dominant group was palpable after being out of power for a decade, and large chunks of them had come out in opposition to the BJP, helping the Congress script a strong Lok Sabha performance and win five seats. The Congress believed that in Bhupinder Singh Hooda, it had a towering figure from the community, and put the two-term CM in the driver’s seat of the campaign. His factions cornered a lion’s share of tickets (angering other groups and leaders, for example, former Union minister and Dalit leader Kumari Selja) and the party put up 27 Jat candidates, far higher than the BJP. The message went out that the Jats were backing the Congress — its star candidate, Vinesh Phogat, was also a Jat fighting from Julana — and that if the Congress returned, it would also mark a comeback for the Hooda family.
This is a polarising message. Any dominant community typically spurs resentment among other groups that believe that their legitimate aspirations are being throttled by strongman politics. Memories of the violent Jat agitation for quotas — essentially a ploy to bolster their floundering economic dominance in rural areas — had not evaporated from popular consciousness, and communities who suffered at the hands of Jats bristled at the Congress’s high-pitch campaign.
There was a related problem. Other groups may have backed the Congress and Rahul Gandhi in the Lok Sabha, but the Vidhan Sabha is another game, for its impact is felt closer to home. In this context, the BJP was careful in stoking memories of how Jats had a perceived stranglehold on administration and police during Hooda’s regime, strategically reminding the electorate of atrocities such as the anti-Dalit violence in Mirchpur in 2010, or the kharchi-parchi system of getting government jobs. It ran a low-key campaign that was focussed on reminding smaller groups what the return of Hooda could mean to their everyday life, even as the Congress dialled up the decibel on its Jat-focussed campaign — in hindsight, a strategic mistake.
Ultimately, as the results showed, even in seats dominated by Jats, there was near-total polarisation against the Congress’s Jat candidate as smaller groups coalesced to ensure the defeat of the dominant. Only 13of Congress’s 27 Jat candidates won.
Two, the other backward classes. The BJP had nominated Punjabi Khatri Manohar Lal Khattar as CM in 2014, breaking the hold of Jats on the state’s top job. With months to go for the 2024 polls and its alliance with the Jannayak Janata Party in doldrums, the party made an improbable switch — replacing Khattar for his protege, Nayab Singh Saini. A relatively junior lawmaker, Saini at the time seemed an odd choice.
But his rapid elevation in the party — first as state unit chief to replace OP Dhankhar, a Jat, in 2023 and then as the first OBC CM of the state a year later — was an important signal to a community that shapes the electoral verdict in the Ahirwal belt in southern Haryana. This region, spanning Gurugram, Rewari and Mahendragarh, was a BJP fortress in 2014 and 2019. But the Congress had quietly chipped away at some support in the area, and it was crucial for the BJP to hold on to this base. Saini’s own community is a key OBC group, and his elevation helped make the BJP’s case that it stood for a broader social coalition that was not limited to one dominant group.
To further the case, Union home minister Amit Shah told rally after rally about the state’s move to increase the ceiling for creamy layer exclusions within the OBC quota, and expanding reservations for the backwards in Group A and Group B government jobs — essentially catering to the aspirational class within these communities. The results were clear — of the 23 seats in southern Haryana, the BJP won 17.
Three, Dalits. A driving force behind the Congress’s Lok Sabha showing, Dalits were far less enthusiastic to back a Jat-oriented campaign. The Congress further exacerbated those worries with a public spat between Hooda and the state’s tallest leader Kumari Selja. The BJP was careful to underline Selja’s dissension in every rally, in a bid to ensure that Chamars, the largest SC group in the state, remain lukewarm to the Congress.
Then, just days before the polls, Haryana announced that it will divide SCs into deprived scheduled castes (DSC) comprising 36 groups such as Balmikis, Dhanaks, Mazhabi Sikhs and Khatiks, and other scheduled castes (OSC) comprising Chamar, Jatav, Rehgar, Raigar, among others. The government decided that DSCs will have an internal reservation of 50% within the SC quota.
The division helped push a small but significant chunk of the Dalit vote — especially those of the second-largest SC community in the state, Balmikis — to the BJP. This helped not only in reserved seats, where the BJP and Congress ran neck-and-neck, but also gained a few hundred votes in every seat, making the difference in an election where the difference in vote share between the two parties was 0.8 percentage points.
This verdict is an inflection point for the Congress.
In 2022, Akhilesh Yadav faced a similar dilemma in Uttar Pradesh. He maximised the appeal of the Yadav vote and the got the highest vote share for the Samajwadi Party, but still lost because of counter-polarisation against the dominance of Yadavs in his state. He responded by retooling his party, focussing on non-dominant groups, and became the single-largest party in this summer’s Lok Sabha polls.
The Congress may now have to look for similar answers — five years later.