In 2005 the Congress routed the ruling Om Parkash Chautala-led INLD by humbling it to mere nine seats which denied it even the status of Opposition party. The main reasons behind Congress victory was the electorate's determination to punish Chautala for his autocratic functioning and terror atmosphere that prevailed during his six years rule. The polls saw a large section of Jats shifting their loyalties from the Devi Lal clan's party to the Congress.

In order to consolidate and expand its base among the Jats Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda generously granted freebies and concessions to the Jat-dominated farming community during his 2005-2009 rule.

On the eve of the prematurely called October 2009 Assembly elections it appeared that Hooda's amiable and gentlemanly nature, his ending the atmosphere of terror in the state and the fast economic and industrial development Haryana witnessed during his Chief Ministership would enable the ruling Congress to further eat into the INLD's Jat support base and comfortably return to power.

Two factors, however, belied the Congress optimism. One was the impact of marginalized anti-incumbency that had developed due to the failures of the Hooda regime in some arenas. The other was the Chautala clan's family friend Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal's boosting of the demoralised Chautala's morale. He and his son Sukhbir campaigned for Chautala's party while a recomposed Chautala undertook a vigorous campaign to woo the electorate. These factors paid handsome electoral dividends enabling INLD to win 31 seats and reducing the Congress's 2005 tally of 67 to 40 seats.

Hooda, however, succeeded in combating the serious threat to his party's return to power by luring the seven Independents to support the Congress form a government and later by winning over five of the six HJC's MLAs thereby helping Congress to have its own majority.

What form Haryana's future political scenario will take largely depends on the outcome of the strategies the state's main political parties are now unfolding.

The Congress, in the first year of its second term, is trying to recover its eroded bases among Jats and urbanites in which INLD and Bhajan Lal's Haryana Janhit Congress had made inroads by winning 31 and six seats respectively. Hooda has resumed giving concessions to the farming community, the first important being the doubling of land acquisition rates last week.

The INLD leaders have criticized the new acquisition rates saying that these are far below the market rates as also of those being given by Punjab government. The criticism, however, may not convince many as during INLD's six years of rule, much lower rates were given to Haryana farmers. The government also had to face High Court's flak for giving land acquired for “public purpose” at extremely low rates to private developers. Incidentally, the Hooda government has also faced High Court's indictment in many cases for giving the acquired lands to private developers.

There is no confusion among the knowledgeable circles about the motives behind the successive state governments handing over the lands acquired for “public purposes” to private land sharks at very low rates.

There are also indications that political loyalties of some sections of the urbanites which had shifted to the HJC are undergoing a change. The HJC which had made inroads into the Congress' non-Jat base in 2005 by winning six seats seems to be losing ground mainly due to the party's hibernation and absence of any state-level charismatic leader in the absence of the inactive Bhajan Lal. This is indicated by the Congress' getting overwhelming majority in the recently held urban local body elections which also indicated the erosion in the already marginalised BJP's support base.

The Congress' urban support, however, now faces threat from two sources. Changing his strategy, Chautala seems to be also wooing non-Jats. He has taken a U-turn on the issue of reservations by advocating reservation on the basis of economic conditions than on caste basis. He perhaps realizes that after the erosion of INLD's Jat support base by the Congress, it was impossible for INLD to capture power without the support of non-Jats.

The second development is the formation of Vanchit Samaj Sangharsh Samiti by the expelled Congress leader Roshan Lal Arya for launching a crusade against the “discrimination of non-Jats in INLD and Congress rules despite the fact that non-Jats form 81 per cent of Haryana's total population”. Arya may not have a sizeable political base. But his move may get a fillip from the impression -which the ruling Congress leaders deny- that has been gaining ground that in the Hooda regime Jats are being discriminated particularly in government jobs at non-Jats cost.

The foregoing political undercurrents and the political parties altering support basis will lay the foundation of the electoral fate particularly of the Congress and INLD in the 2014 poll. But these factors may not affect the fortunes of the marginalised BJP and of smaller parties like HJC and BSP in any significant way, if at all. (IPA Service)