Though BJP continued ignoring farmers’ protest on the outskirts of Delhi for more than 100 days, suddenly their ferocity across Haryana, ahead of crucial Lok Sabha polls turned to be a rude shock to the party.
It practically caught in surprise with the campaigning in full swing for the 10 Lok Sabha seats in the state, that were all won by the BJP in 2019, in village after village farmers preventing BJP candidates and campaigners from entering.
Posters have come up across the state warning BJP candidates and campaigners against entering villages. As farmers intensified their protests in Hisar, Sirsa, Fatehabad, Jind, Sonipat and Rohtak districts, candidates forcing their way through have often been physically stopped.
Last week, farmers blocked former deputy chief minister Dushyant Chautala’s mother Naina Chautala’s entourage from entering Roj Khera in the Hisar Lok Sabha constituency. In the violent clash that followed, some of her supporters were hurt.
Most BJP and Jannayak Janta Party (JJP) candidates have now been provided security cover to enable them to campaign. Even so, the entire Chautala clan, including father Ajay Chautala and his other son Digvijay, as well as BJP’s Hisar nominee Ranjit Singh Chautala, are being heckled and prevented from entering village after village.
Farmers holding black flags opposed Dushyant’s cavalcade from entering Nara and Gamra villages, forcing him to walk.BJP candidates in Punjab have been met with similar expressions of anger by villagers who are in no mood to overlook the wounds inflicted on them during the 2020–21 agitation against the three draconian farm laws.
Four Intelligence Bureau officials were forced to rush to Haryana from Delhi last week to oversee security arrangements of former chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar and other BJP candidates facing backlash from farmers during their poll rallies in the
Jat heartland.
Khattar, who is contesting from the high-profile Karnal seat in Haryana, and other BJP candidates have been routinely facing black flags amid aggressive sloganeering from villagers. Some of the candidates are not even allowed to enter the villages.
The Jats, estimated to form 22-23 per cent of the state’s population, hold sway in the 10 parliamentary seats in Haryana.
Posters and banners have cropped up in several villages of Haryana and Punjab announcing that the leaders of the BJP and its former ally Jannayak Janta Party (JJP) are not allowed “entry”.
