The state’s mainstream political parties are not in the pink of health. The ruling Congress has been plagued by factionalism and organisational weaknesses. It usually scores self-goals often because of the ruling leadership’s over-ambitious detractors or its deficit governance. The biggest example is the criticism of the chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda by his party adversaries on, what they allege, the state’s unbalanced development which has deprived their constituencies of their due share in development. The most prominent among them include Union Minister Kumari Selja, CWC member Birender Singh and party’s Gurgaon MP Rao Inderjit Singh. The chief minister has denied the discrimination charge citing the projects undertaken by the government in his critics’ constituencies.

The latest issue, which has annoyed Birender Singh, is the last minute dropping of his name from the list of those who were recently inducted in the Manmohan Singh cabinet. His supporters allege that the exclusion was manipulated by Hooda.

As a counter move, Birender Singh met Sonia Gandhi and requested her to attend the rally being organised by him at Jind on August 20 on the occasion of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s birth anniversary. Apparently to placate him, she accepted the invitation.

It is the internal squabbles in Haryana Congress which should prompt its leadership to undertake introspection as the party often scores self-goals because of the infighting among its leaders. This is what also happened in Punjab. There was widespread perception that the Congress would win the 2012 Assembly elections. But the squabbles in the party, skillfully exploited, including with the use of money power, by the ruling Akali leadership became one of the major reasons of its unexpected defeat.

There are no two opinions that Haryana has witnessed a big leap in developmental arena during the Hooda-led rule. The state has attracted huge direct foreign investment. It has also secured a number of central projects for different parts of the state. These will give a fillip to development and employment. In political terms, these developments indicate that Hooda enjoys the central leadership’s unstinted support.

Notwithstanding these favourable developments, what should prompt chief minister to undertaken an introspection, particularly in the context of the 2014 elections, are the challenges he faces in governance arena.

The government has been increasingly finding itself in the dock on issues, like excesses against Dalits, rapes, and lose governance. People had not yet forgotten Mirchpur incident which forced the dalit families of the village to migrate from their habitat when reports of such incidents also started coming from some other parts of the state. The latest was from Pabnawa village where over 200 Dalit families were forced to migrate following attacks on Dalits by upper caste Ror community members. Such happenings can deprive the ruling party of the support of one of its potentially main vote banks.

Deficit governance has been another cause of the government’s various lapses. Call it his lose grip over the bureaucracy or Hooda’s amiable nature, implementation of the government’s decisions has been slow. This breeds disenchantment and strengthens anti-incumbency sentiment. The process, if not checked, will cost the ruling party in elections. Such a situation is a warning signal for the state’s ruling leadership.

The state’s main opposition party INLD needs to introspect as it stands virtually paralysed because of the absence of its charismatic but ailing crowd puller Om Parkash Chautala and his second-in-command elder son Ajay Chautala. They are in jail undergoing ten-year imprisonment in the JBT teachers recruitment scam case. The party faces an era of uncertainty mainly because Chautala and both his sons Ajay and Abhey are also facing corruption and disproportionate assets cases in a CBI court.

About the BJP, the less said the better. The party has earned the distinction of being a chronic ally-changer. There has been virtually no non-Congress state-level party with which it has not formed an alliance only to jump to another party’s bandwagon later. It had formed alliances with the Devi Lal clan-led outfits, presently being INLD, and Bansi Lal’s Haryana Vikas party. But it parted ways not long after joining hands with them. It had even played an active role in toppling its ally Bansi Lal’s government in 1999 in which it itself was a participant by joining hands with Chautala. It soon parted company with Chautala also.

Now the BJP has formed an alliance with Haryana Janhit Congress, which is presently led by Kuldeep BIshnoi, son of late chief minister Bhajan Lal. On the issue of choosing its ally, there have been sharp differences between the party’s central leadership and the influential section of the state leadership. The central leadership wanted the party to join hands with Chautala who has developed an equation with Narendra Modi. But the state BJP opposed the central leadership’s move and insisted on forming an alliance with HJC. In this process of alliance hopping, the BJP’s support base in the state got deeply eroded and organisational set-up weakened.

Haryana Janhit Congress scored its first crucial self-goal through a penalty corner when its defences collapsed with the betrayal of the vulnerable five of its newly elected six MLAs who quit the party immediately after winning the 2009 prematurely held Assembly elections and joined the Congress. Bhajan Lal, the self-proclaimed “PhD in politics” was then still alive.

The HJC suffers from a weak ground-level organisational network and a state-wide support base. These were perhaps the reasons that the party, despite being urban-based, did not contest the recently held municipal corporation elections in the state. Kuldeep Bishnoi has now decided to take out two-month long “vijay rath yatra” to the state’s all the 90 assembly constituencies to garner support for the party.

The above scenario predicts that Haryana would have an action-packed run-up to the 2014 elections. (IPA Service)