GURGAON: This assembly election in Haryana, BJP’s posters speak louder than any campaign speech.
After 10 years in office in the state, the party does not have Manohar Lal Khattar, who served as CM for almost the entire period before BJP replaced him with Nayab Singh Saini this March and moved him to the Centre as Union minister for housing and urban affairs, on its posters.It has gone with Saini’s face alongside a slightly larger one of Modi, but both are mugshots that sit in a corner of the posters, a conspicuous departure from BJP campaigns in the state and nationally since 2014 in which Modi’s face would be the centrepiece. This time the face of the aam aadmi dominates posters.
In Haryana, anti-incumbency fears made BJP re-strategise
On BJP posters both on billboards and online, instead, are faces of common woman and man. Students, young entrepreneurs, women and even farmers, all promoting govt initiatives, its highway projects, startup policies, etc.
One poster, featuring a farmer, says, “Yeh hai highway se dooriyan kam karne wali sarkar (This is a govt that bought the highways closer to us)”. Another, with a woman’s face on it, says, “Yeh hai startup ko support karne wali sarkar (This is a govt that supports startups)”
It’s evident that the party — seen to be facing anti-incumbency headwinds and dropping from all 10 LS seats to 5 in the April-May general elections — sees strength in govt schemes. Since Lok Sabha polls, in which BJP fell short of the majority and formed a coalition govt, Haryana and J&K are the first major elections. While state BJP chief Mohan Lal Badoli could not be reached, party insiders said it was compelled to re-strategise to reduce the impact of anti-incumbency in the elections.
In March, BJP effected a change of guard just before Lok Sabha polls by bringing in Kurukshetra MP and state unit chief Saini. The Saini govt has since gone on a welfarist push. One of the first things it did was to launch ‘Happy (Haryana Antyodaya Parivar Parivahan Yojana) card’, offering free bus rides up to 1,000km a year to members of families with an annual income up to Rs 1 lakh. “Yeh hai humein muft bus yatra karane wali sarkar (This is a govt that has given us free bus rides),” proclaims a poster advertising the scheme, the biggest faces on it is that of a family.
“We understand that after being in office for 10 years, some amount of anti-incumbency has set in, and thus, there was a need to replace the CM face and change our strategy. Our ground reports backed up this assessment,” said a senior BJP functionary, when asked about its thought behind the posters. New schemes BJP has proposed have also found prominence in the campaign, like Lado Lakshmi (Rs 2,100 for women in BPL families) and an Olympic Games nursery in every district.
Rao Narbir Singh, who was a minister in the first Khattar govt and is contesting from Gurgaon’s Badshapur this time to try and win back the seat he lost in 2019, has been praising Saini in his speeches but makes no mention of his former boss Khattar. Asked about the posters, he was candid. “Whatever development work was done, at least in Gurgaon, it happened from 2014-2019. After this, not even a foundation stone for a community centre was laid. This is probably why the faces on the poster are of the common man,” he said.