BJP pads up for 2nd innings to face Kanda bouncer and Sena's strong stance

The results of the state Assembly elections in Haryana and Maharashtra might have belied expectations of a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) sweep, but on Friday the party looked set to form governments in both states.
Haryana: Close call

In Haryana, where the BJP won 40 seats — five short of the halfway mark in the 90-seat Assembly — it is expected to overcome the shortfall with five Independent members of Legislative Assembly announcing their support to the ruling party.
Independent candidates Dharampal Gondan, Nayanpal Rawat, Sombir Sangwan, Rakesh Daulatabad, and Randheer Golan met BJP working chief J P Nadda in New Delhi. Ranjeet Chautala also extended his support to the ruling party. BJP leaders said Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) leader Abhay Chautala will also back it.
Jannayak Janata Party (JJP) chief Dushyant Chautala spurned overtures from the Congress to indicate his party’s support to the BJP. The JJP has won 10 seats in polls, results for which were declared on Thursday.
The BJP legislative party meeting will be held on Saturday. Party chief Amit Shah has appointed Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and senior leader Arun Singh as observers.
There was speculation on whether Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar would continue, but party sources said he was unlikely to be removed immediately.
He is likely to stake claim to form the government on Saturday, while oath taking will take place after Diwali (October 27).
Kanda bouncer
But, the party also faced major criticism on Friday for taking support from Haryana Lokhit Party founder Gopal Kanda. By evening BJP sources said Kanda, an accused in criminal cases, will not find a place in the new council of ministers.
Senior BJP leader Uma Bharti appealed to her party to not forget its moral goals. “Whether Kanda is a criminal or innocent will be decided by the courts but he cannot be absolved of his crime because he has won an election,” Bharti tweeted.
Maharashtra: Shiv Sena’s strong stance
Shiv Sena Member of Parliament Sanjay Raut on Friday posted a cartoon on social media taking a dig at the BJP. It shows a tiger, Shiv Sena’s symbol, wearing a locket with a clock, the Nationalist Congress Party’s (NCP’s) symbol, sniffing a lotus, the BJP’s symbol.
The picture is captioned: “Bura na maano, Diwali hai (Don’t mind, it’s Diwali)”. The message, however, is that the NCP, the Congress and the Shiv Sena could get together to prevent the BJP from returning to power.
The Shiv Sena is likely to be tame ally. It wants a 50-50 formula to rotational chief ministers for the state, and wants its young leader Aaditya Thackeray, given his administrative inexperience, the deputy chief minister’s job for the first two-and-a-half years.
With the BJP falling 40 short of the majority mark of 145 in the 228-strong House, an editorial in Sena’s Saamana on Friday ridiculed the “maha janadesh” tour that Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had undertaken during his poll campaign.
The editorial said people had rejected the notion that elections can be swept by engineering defections and splitting Opposition parties. It said the “BJP broke the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP)” in such a manner in run-up to elections that people wondered if the Sharad Pawar-led party had any future. “But the NCP bounced back crossing the 50-seat mark, while a leaderless Congress won 44 seats. The results were a warning to rulers not to show arrogance of power... it’s a rap on their knuckles.”
Bypoll googly
On Janata Dal (United)’s drubbing in the bypolls on five seats in Bihar, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said his party is replete with by-election debacles followed by spectacular performance in the state polls. Bihar Assembly polls are in October next year. The JD(U) held four of the five seats, but could win only one.
In Lucknow, Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati blamed the BJP for her party drawing a blank in the 11 seats that had by-polls. She said the BJP helped Samajwadi Party win some seats.
In the bypolls to 11 Assembly seats, the BJP and its ally Apna Dal(S) bagged eight and the SP three.
SP chief Akhilesh Yadav said the decision by Opposition parties to go solo in the Uttar Pradesh by-polls helped expose the BJP’s “darker side” and effectively conveyed message of its “failure”.

Campaigning for Assembly elections ends in Maharashtra, Haryana

The campaigning for the Assembly polls in Haryana and Maharashtra ended on Saturday evening with speculation mostly over whether the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will win a two-thirds or a three-fourths majority in Haryana, and if the late surge in favour of Sharad Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) will prevent an embarrassing rout of the Opposition in Maharashtra.
The polling is on Monday and the counting of votes on October 24. Over the past month, the BJP succeeded in keeping the political narrative focused on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership and scrapping of provisions of Article 370 rather than the economic slowdown.

While a BJP win would further consolidate its political domination, the more interesting questions face the Congress and the NCP — if they, as opinion polls predict, would suffer massive defeats.
Pawar is not only fighting for his party’s survival, but is also at work to revive the party by projecting younger leaders from outside his political dynasty. A video of his speech in Satara on Thursday has gone viral on social media. Pawar, drenched in rain, apologised to the people for fielding a candidate who crossed over to the BJP.
Anecdotal evidence, as also increasing number of people turning up in his public rallies, suggests that the NCP has witnessed somewhat of a revival after the Enforcement Directorate moved against Pawar.
However, people at large remember that the Congress-NCP alliance ran the government in Maharashtra for 15 years from 1999 to 2014, and complain of their dynastic hold over sugar and bank co-operatives. His close friends and associates say that at 78, Pawar is concerned about the legacy he would leave behind.
The Congress faces an equally interesting fate. October 24 could accelerate the party towards a denouement of the tussle between the younger leaders that Rahul Gandhi leads, versus the veterans led by party treasurer Ahmed Patel.
Such is the tension between the two factions that former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda cancelled his plans to address a rally in Mahendragarh in Haryana on Friday after his office came to know that Sonia Gandhi will not be travelling to the place, but Rahul Gandhi will. There is much bad blood between the two after Kumari Selja, at the behest of Hooda, replaced Ashok Tanwar as the state unit chief. Tanwar is close to Rahul Gandhi.
With Rahul Gandhi having quit as party chief, and the reins now in the hands of the seniors, it is they who are likely to be blamed for the anticipated routs of the party in the two states. In Maharashtra, none of its senior leaders campaigned for the party, restricting themselves in their respective constituencies.
Former chief minister Ashok Chavan did not campaign beyond his Bhokar seat, while Sushilkumar Shinde spent most of the time campaigning for his daughter in Solapur Central seat and Prithviraj Chavan remained in his Karad seat.
According to sources, those close to Rahul Gandhi have phoned several leaders to find out if they were willing to support him in his final battle against the veterans in the coming weeks.
Haryana has 90 Assembly seats, and Maharashtra 288. Opinion polls have predicted a comfortable win for the BJP in Haryana, and the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance in Maharashtra. The BJP, and its allies, currently rule both the states.