In yet another sign of friction between Haryana’s ruling parties, Deputy Chief Minister Dushyant Chautala of the Jannayak Janata Party (JJP) countered the BJP’s claims of winning all 10 Lok Sabha seats in the state. “Neither can we stop BJP, nor can BJP stop us,” Chautala said, stating that his party is also preparing to “contest and win” all 10 seats. The JJP leader’s remarks follow Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s proclamations at a rally in Sirsa earlier this week, where he voiced confidence in the party’s ability to secure all Lok Sabha seats in the states without help. On Thursday, the Deputy CM declared that the JJP is “also preparing for 10 out of 10 seats,” hinting at a competitive undercurrent within the coalition amid speculations about both parties’ willingness to contest together.
The gathering at Sirsa was aimed at rallying support for the BJP and Shah expressed his hopes for the party to win over 300 seats in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The BJP-JJP alliance has been governing Haryana since 2019 after the BJP fell short of a majority in the Assembly polls, winning 40 of the 90-seat Haryana Legislative Assembly, and subsequently formed a government with the support of the JJP, which had 10 seats. Chautala also suggested that his father, Dr Ajay Chautala, could be a contender for the Bhiwani seat. Despite the escalating verbal conflict, Chautala has continued to insist that the coalition is working smoothly. This resilience he attributed to the steady growth of JJP’s vote bank, which he said has been on the rise since the party’s inception. “Since the formation of the JJP, our vote bank is continuously increasing. Our target is to get 40 percent votes in the next year.
The government is running strong in the coalition and will continue to run.”
The Deputy CM also took a jibe at Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s election campaign from Jind, saying that “smaller parties” had launched campaigns in the region to attempt to weaken the JJP.
