Communal tension gripped Nuh in 2023, 75% quota for locals remained non-starter

An attack on a religious procession in Nuh, close to the national capital, left six people dead and kept the region, including Haryana’s commerce and tech hub Gurugram, on tenterhooks for days this year. Internet services were restricted, schools closed and rumours abounded. During the past year, Haryana’s BJP-Jannayak Janta Party government also faced a setback in the Punjab and Haryana High Court when it quashed the state law that allowed 75 per cent reservation in private sector jobs for local people.

The JJP, which is the junior partner in the alliance, had pushed for the quota. In any case, the two coalition partners remain reluctant to explicitly state whether they will fight the next election together. Months before the Nuh violence, the state machinery faced flak over the death of two Muslim men from neighbouring Rajasthan whose bodies were found in a charred car in Haryana’s Bhiwani district.

Their relatives blamed cow vigilantes for the deaths, and the Haryana Police for not taking action in time – a charge denied by the cops.
Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP)-led procession in Nuh was attacked in July, killing five people, including two home guards. Sporadic incidents of violence followed, including an attack on a mosque in neighbouring Gurugram in which a Muslim cleric was killed. The high court took suo motu cognizance of a demolition drive in the area where the procession came under attack, and questioned if it was an exercise in “ethnic cleansing”.

Later Congress MLA Mamman Khan was arrested in four cases linked to the Nuh violence. His party accused the state government of launching a “political witch-hunt”.
The Nuh violence also drew attention to the sometimes uneasy relationship between Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar and Anil Vij, who holds the Home and Health portfolios in his ministry.

Vij denied having any intelligence input on build-up of tension in Nuh, and told reporters that the CM, whose portfolio includes the CID department, has “all the information”.

In October, Vij also expressed displeasure over “interference” in his health department by officials in the Chief Minister’s Office and stopped clearing files for several weeks. Signs of differences between the ruling BJP and ally Jannayak Janta Party also emerged with leaders from both parties taking occasional swipes at each other. The high court ruling against a job quota in the private sector for Haryanvis – the law was subject to a salary ceiling — was a setback in particular for the JJP, which had made this a poll plank in 1919. The high court declared the quota “unconstitutional”.

The sports powerhouse did the nation proud again. Haryana’s players won 30 of the country’s 107 medals at the Asian Games in China.