Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary and former Rajya Sabha member Sitaram Yechury passed away in a Delhi hospital on September 12 after battling a severe respiratory infection. He was 72. People from across the political spectrum mourned his passing, recalling his commitment to the working class, the Constitution, and social justice and equality.

Sitaram, or just “Sita” to his friends, cut his teeth in politics early, as a student in Jawaharlal Nehru University, a Left bastion in the 1970s. He was elected president of the JNU Students Union three times between 1977 and 1978, a period he would later describe with characteristic wit and humour as his term was punctuated by interruptions, coinciding with post-Emergency struggles. He was also arrested for a brief while during that period. Later, in the 1980s, he was elected all-India president of the Students’ Federation of India (SFI).

Yechury will be remembered and celebrated for his role as a Member of Parliament and for bringing together diverse political forces in the battle against communalism and authoritarianism, which are among the many facets of his journey as a pragmatic communist.

The political upsurges during his JNU years, which eventually evolved into the struggle against the Emergency, coupled with his study of economics with the late Krishna Bharadwaj and others at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, provided the milieu in which his political perspective developed.

He began a doctorate on Indian agriculture, which he never completed, but a paper based on the early stages of his research appeared in Economic & Political Weekly in 1976.

Early years

A brilliant student, he was born in Chennai (then Madras) into a family that came from Kakinada in Andhra Pradesh. He was raised and did his schooling in Hyderabad. As a result, he was conversant in both Hindi and English.

He landed in Delhi for higher studies and graduated with a bachelor’s degree from St. Stephen’s College. Yechury had a stellar academic record, having stood first in the all-India examination of the Central Board of Secondary Education.

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He also played tennis, loved old Hindi film songs, the tunes of which he often whistled, and he was completely colour blind. One of his favourite songs was the Hemant Kumar number “Ae mere pyare watan” from the film Kabuliwala.

He was a junior of fellow ideologue and party member Prakash Karat, and both were early mentors to subsequent generations of student leaders who lived by the motto of “study and struggle” and “education for all”, which was the SFI creed.

Yechury perhaps figured out early on that the most complex ideas could be communicated in the language of the people. He was not one for using complex theories, at least in the public domain, and he knew that the Left movement and Left politics could become popular only by raising people’s issues through class struggles and by demystifying jargon.

His affability was well known, something friends and associates recall fondly. Yechury was popular, but he was not a demagogue; nor did he use bombastic language. His speeches were conversational in style, presenting arguments conveyed in a language that everyone could understand.

CPI(M)‘s ‘rising star’

His political journey from student leader to joining the ranks of the CPI(M) in the mid-1970s often led to descriptions of him as a “rising star” of the party. In the 1980s, he was the editor of the SFI journal, Students’ Struggle, which reached new heights during his tenure. Yechury even enlisted the support of Safdar Hashmi, the renowned playwright and director, in this venture.

It was during this time that the then government’s “Challenge of Education” document appeared, marking the beginnings of a shift in the country’s education policy towards what was then known as the “New Education Policy”, which eventually became the National Policy on Education 1986. Yechury was a leading figure in developing a critique of that policy and organising resistance to it. 

In 1985, 10 years after Yechury joined the CPI(M), he was elected to the Central Committee of the party. The following years were tumultuous ones for any communist: the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev and the introduction of glasnost and perestroika in the Soviet Union, the Tiananmen Square incident, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the eventual collapse of socialism in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe.

The Left, globally and internally, was under severe attack. In the ideological challenges and debates that sprung up from these events, Yechury stayed firm: mistakes may have been made but socialism was the future. He always analysed these developments within a Marxist framework and actively participated in shaping the CPI(M)’s positions on these questions.

In Parliament, Yechury’s speeches often referred to “India, that is Bharat”, to exemplify the country’s syncretic tradition. This emphasis only grew after the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance assumed power in 2014 and attacks on minorities became commonplace. He defended his alma mater (JNU) in Parliament when it was unfairly targeted by the regime. He was equally emphatic about the attack on institutions, the subversion of the Constitution, the safeguarding of the rights of Dalits and minorities, and the need to safeguard the autonomy of higher educational institutions. At the same time, he also realised that while both the Congress and the BJP were bourgeois parties, the threat from the latter was greater. There was a growing feeling that the changed conditions perhaps necessitated the forging of tactical alliances without compromising on the fundamentals of ideology.

No disconnect between personality and politics

Despite its greatly reduced influence in Parliament post-2014, the Left parties led by the CPI(M) still commanded considerable moral heft. Forging a secular third front was not enough. There was also a need for an alternative to the economic policies that had widened inequalities unmeasurably since the onset of neoliberal reforms. How this could be wrought despite the class contradictions of political parties was a tightrope walk that Yechury learned to perform with ease.

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It was no secret that several policies and measures undertaken by the first United Progressive Alliance government and the emergence of a Common Minimum Programme had the strong imprint of the Left. This imprint continued in the run-up to the 2024 Lok Sabha election in the forging of the INDIA bloc and the concerns its parties raised.

Yechury’s ability to get disparate political parties to communicate with each other and rally them together to create for an anti-BJP front has been written about in various tributes. There was no disconnect between his personality and his politics. His personality was immeasurably shaped by his politics.

His commitment to socialism and to the masses remained unwavering. And that is what he should ideally be remembered for.

Trouble from allies seems to be mounting for the BJP, especially from its partners in Bihar, where the Assembly election is due next year. While K.C. Tyagi of the Janata Dal (United) or JD(U) suddenly resigned from the key role of party chief spokesperson on September 1, days after he made statements distancing the JD(U) from the BJP’s key decisions, including lateral entry into services and the Uniform Civil Code, LJP (Ram Vilas) chief and Union Minister Chirag Paswan, who had also issued statements opposing the Centre’s proposals, adopted a reconciliatory tone following a meeting with Home Minister Amit Shah after it appeared that the BJP might reopen channels of communication with his estranged uncle, Pashupati Kumar Paras.

Paswan, who proudly claimed himself to be the “Hanuman” of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, had openly expressed his opinion against a number of decisions of the Modi government in the last two months. In August, when a notification came for lateral entry recruitment of 45 joint secretaries, directors, and deputy secretaries, Paswan said that this was “completely wrong” and that his party was “absolutely not in favour” of it. Paswan, whose party has been pitching for quotas even in the private sector, wants the government to adhere to reservations whenever it issues notifications for jobs. His statement echoes the opposition’s claim that the government’s move undermines the rights of Other Backward Classes (OBCs), Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs). The government later withdrew the notification.

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Paswan is also batting for a caste census, a demand being aggressively pushed by the Congress and other opposition parties. Equally vocal was his protest against the Waqf Amendment Bill brought in by the government in the monsoon session. In the midst of all this, Paswan’s uncle Pashupati Kumar Paras, who was in the political wilderness ever since the BJP chose to dump him in favour of Paswan before the 2024 election, suddenly met with Amit Shah. There are indications that Paras could get a key position now. He was a Union Minister in the previous Modi government after forming his own party, walking away with all LJP MPs barring Paswan, in 2021.

In 2024, the tables turned and Paras was not given a single Lok Sabha seat to contest from Bihar even as his party remained part of the NDA, while Paswan’s faction contested five seats and won all. However, after becoming Minister of Food Processing Industries, Paswan has tried to maintain the distinct identity of LJP, which in the past allied with socialist parties and Congress.

Paswan’s recent assertions have not gone down well within the BJP. Political experts view Paras’ meeting with Shah and his assertion that he will contest the Bihar Assembly election as part of NDA, as the BJP’s pressure tactic to rein in Paswan. Also, there was a recent development that raised eyebrows. A BJP leader in Bihar filed a complaint challenging Paswan’s Lok Sabha election from Hajipur alleging that he suppressed details about a criminal case.

On August 30, TMC MP Mahua Moitra posted on microblogging site X: “SOP of BJP. The minute any “ally” shows a spine, wants caste census, speaks up against WAKF amendment- get cases filed, break party, put pressure & get them to shut up.” She advised Paswan to “stand strong”.

The Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) alleged that the BJP could have poached three LJP MPs, a contention officially denied by LJP, which at the same time did not mince words in criticising Paras and his meeting with Shah. Paswan, on his part, met Shah and expressed confidence that the relationship between him and the BJP was unbreakable. He shared photos of his meeting with Shah on social media and told media persons that there was no possibility of any divide within the party. (It was Paswan who had pushed his father, Ram Vilas Paswan, to join hands with the BJP in February 2014 ahead of the Lok Sabha election after a gap of 12 years.)

The sudden resignation of Tyagi, JDU’s media face in Delhi, was baffling to journalists and politicians of UP and Bihar. Even as the media tried to decipher it, conflicting versions emerged, from Tyagi having been fired for taking on the BJP strongly on many issues to Nitish Kumar keeping him from national media handling ahead of a possible realignment of political forces in Bihar.

Days after Tyagi’s resignation, Bihar’s Leader of the Opposition Tejashwi Yadav met Chief Minister Nitish Kumar at the Secretariat in Patna on September 4, fuelling speculation of another reshuffle in Bihar politics. However, Nitish Kumar quickly sought to establish that he will not change sides any more and said that joining hands with RJD twice in the past was a mistake. On August 9, Tejashwi Yadav also ruled out any future alliance with Nitish Kumar.

Ajay Gudavarthy, associate professor at the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, told Frontline: “The relation between the BJP and the allies in Modi 3.0 are not set in stone. The allies are not necessarily looking to pull down the government when they are active partners in the government. How the alliance plays out, therefore, depends more on the opposition INDIA bloc and its ability to set a counter-narrative in place.” He added: “The real crisis is Modi 3.0 has lost its ability to set the narrative as it has no substantive agenda. It has lost its optics of unifying the Hindus, without which Modi cannot be in the driver’s seat. Will this lead to weak governance or strong allies is something we need to keep a watch on.”

Managing allies has always been a tough task for ruling parties at the Centre. The first and second Modi-led governments did not face this problem as the BJP had an absolute majority on its own. However, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee had to face tantrums from allies such as Jayalalithaa, Mamata Banerjee, and Mayawati. In the first and second United Progressive Alliance (UPA) governments, headed by Manmohan Singh, pressure from allies was a recurring problem.

The third Modi government, although dependent on allies, is more comfortably placed in comparison to the UPA governments as it is not far off from the majority mark with 240 seats. Its allies have 53 seats in total. For a simple majority, it requires the support of 272 members in the 543-member House. The NDA’s key allies, the Telugu Desam Party, the JD(U), Shiv Sena (Shinde), and the LJP respectively have 16, 12, 7, and 5 members.

In the last two terms, the Modi government had dealt with allies firmly, not acceding to the demand for setting up an NDA Coordination Committee or appointing a convenor for alliance. In fact, Shiv Sena had made the demand for an NDA coordination panel way back in 2015 during the first Modi government. During Modi’s second tenure, even other allies such as the JD(U), LJP, and Apna Dal had demanded a panel to create consensus in decision-making, but it was conveniently ignored.

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After the BJP passed three contentious farm laws in 2020, its key ally Shiromani Akali Dal even broke away from the alliance after the saffron party refused to heed its demand to rescind them. Contrast this with the agility with which the BJP withdrew or agreed to revisit its contentious decisions this time: it cancelled the advertisement for lateral entry appointments, it withdrew the second draft of the Broadcast Bill and extended to October 15 the date for public feedback on the original Bill, it referred the Waqf Board Bill to a JPC for scrutiny, and restored indexation benefit on long-term capital gains.

Some pragmatism

When needed the BJP has shown the pragmatism to stoop to conquer, such as accepting Nitish Kumar as Chief Minister in the alliance government in Bihar despite having a greater number of seats in the Assembly than the JD(U) in 2010 and then in 2020. The BJP clearly realises that it does not have enough heft in Bihar to come to power on its own. Nitish Kumar first the left NDA in 2013, breaking 17-year-long ties with the BJP, and then rejoined it in 2017; he left again in 2022 and rejoined the NDA in 2023. The JD (U), which had won only two of 40 seats in the Lok Sabha in 2014, had forced the BJP to let it contest in 16 seats in 2024. It was a winning combination and the NDA romped home.

The BJP has lost allies in the past. In September 2020, it parted ways with the Shiromani Akali Dal. In September 2023, it lost the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu, although it gained the Janata Dal (Secular) as an ally in Karnataka. It remains to be seen how the Modi-Shah duo will manage a full five years depending on allies like Nitish Kumar, Chirag Paswan, and N. Chandrababu Naidu of the Telugu Desam Party. All of these leaders have worked with parties across the political spectrum and are known to seek the best deal for themselves.

In recent weeks, the NDA government has selectively rolled back a few decisions, the most crucial one being the proposal to induct officers at the level of Joint Secretary, Deputy Secretary, and Director through a “lateral entry” system. Other climbdowns include the withdrawal of the Draft Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill and the referral of the Waqf (Amendment) Bill to a joint parliamentary committee. These instances have led to the belief that the government has paid heed to the counsel of its coalition partners and the opposition, but the U-turn on lateral entry appointments indicates that this could be a misplaced perception.

The Annual Report (2022-23) of the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) states that “lateral recruitment is an initiative of the government to achieve the twin objective of bringing in fresh talent as well as augmenting the availability of manpower at middle management levels by appointing persons, at the level of Joint Secretary, Director and Deputy Secretary, for specific assignments keeping in view their specialised knowledge and expertise in their domain area. A total of 36 officers comprising 09 Joint Secretaries, 18 Directors and 09 Deputy Secretaries, appointed through Lateral Recruitment, are in position in various Ministries/ Departments. The list includes 30 officers who were selected during 2021, comprising three Joint Secretaries, eighteen Directors and nine Deputy Secretaries.”

On August 17, the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) issued a notification, for the second time in less than three months, inviting online applications for lateral recruitment to 45 posts in the three Group A categories of Central government jobs. The contract or deputation was for three to five years, and the deadline for submission was September 17. Candidates needed to have 15 years of work experience for the post of Joint Secretary, and 10 years and 7 years for the Director and Deputy Secretary posts, respectively. Those eligible to apply were officers of States/Union Territories working at equivalent levels and with the requisite experience and individuals in comparable levels in public sector undertakings, autonomous bodies, statutory organisations, universities, recognised research institutes, private sector companies, consultancy organisations, and international and multinational organisations. The advertisement did not provide for any reserved category posts.

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The UPSC issued a similar notification in June for 17 posts in the Group A category. All were for recruitment of candidates belonging to the category of people with “Benchmark Disability”.

Although the government had inducted officers through a similar process in 2018, this was the first time the UPSC was notifying the positions and not the DoPT.

On the back foot

The government appeared to be on the back foot as opposition parties and the ruling party’s own allies, especially the Janata Dal (United) and the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas), objected to it on the grounds that it militated against the principles of social justice.

Within four days of the notification, a letter from the office of Jitendra Singh, Minister of State, DoPT, was sent to UPSC chairperson Preeti Sudan asking her to cancel the advertisement. Before taking over as UPSC chairperson in July following the abrupt resignation of Manoj Soni, Sudan had officiated as Secretary, Health, and held other important portfolios.

Apart from implying that the UPSC had acted on its own, Singh’s letter went on to extol the Prime Minister’s deep resolve to adhere to the principles of equity and social justice. The process of “lateral entry must be aligned” to those principles, especially the provisions concerning reservation, the Minister’s letter said.

Obviously, the BJP could not afford to be seen as “anti-reservation” with elections to three State Assemblies and one Union Territory around the corner. The UPSC chairperson was just the fall guy. The letter reminded the UPSC chairperson that “reservation in public employment is a cornerstone of our social justice framework, aimed at addressing historical injustices and promoting inclusivity” and “it is important that the constitutional mandate towards social justice is upheld so that the deserving candidates from marginalised communities get their rightful representation in the government services”. The letter further reasoned that as these were single-cadre posts, there was no provision for reservation in these appointments, adding that “this aspect needs to be reviewed and reformed in the context of the Hon’ble Prime Minister’s focus on ensuring social justice”.

In a veiled attack on the Congress, the letter mentioned that lateral entry was endorsed by the Second Administrative Reforms Commission constituted in 2005 and chaired by Veerappa Moily, implying that the NDA government was only carrying on something the previous government had initiated. The Sixth Pay Commission (2013) had also recommended the same, the letter pointed out, stating that “both before and after, there have been many high-profile cases of lateral entrants”. What the letter failed to mention, however, was that these high-profile cases were of people with distinguished careers in their fields who were appointed as secretaries or advisers to the government.

What senior bureaucrats say

A few senior bureaucrats Frontline spoke to were of the unanimous opinion that lateral entry at the levels of Joint Secretary, Deputy Secretary, or Director would make no value addition at all.

According to the retired bureaucrat E.A.S. Sarma, successive governments adopted the lateral entry route to bypass reservation on the premise that it ran counter to the idea of “merit” and “expertise”. Other devious ways adopted, he told Frontline, include contract employment, outsourcing, public-private partnerships, and privatisation of Central Public Sector Enterprises. “Since 1991, in the guise of ‘reform’, successive governments have progressively shrunk the size of the public sector to circumvent reservation,” he said.

Sarma said that providing SC, ST, and OBC reservation was a constitutional obligation that both the United Progressive Alliance and NDA governments had violated. He explained that the role of a Joint Secretary in a ministry was different from the role of an “expert” recruited from outside. A person in that position was expected to ensure that a proposal processed in a ministry was consistent with the relevant laws, aligned with the government’s formally adopted policies for that sector, and upheld the values of the Constitution—tasks for which a specialist may not be particularly suitable. He added that lateral entry could be justified for certain key roles, such as Chief Economic Adviser, or advisers in ministries related to mining, petroleum, and chemicals, and in the NITI Aayog and other think tanks. Any first entry, he said, should be subject to reservation.

“Contextually, the recent moves on the part of the government to nominate civil services to function as rath prabharis [incharge] before elections to promote a personality cult, lifting the six-decade ban on civil servants joining the RSS and loading important public institutions with persons selected on the basis of their ideological bias, have rendered the move to recruit Joint Secretary-level officers laterally particularly dubious. I am glad the government dropped the proposal under pressure,” Sarma said.

M.G. Devasahayam, another retired civil servant and a former Army officer, said that the Indian Administrative Services was created with “the idea that the best talent, best brains must come up to hold the country together through a common interest. The IAS has no central cadre. Its officers are recruited and trained by the government of India and are sent to the States. They bring together the experiences of the entire country. They are expected to reflect the pulse of the country.” He cited how he, although belonging to Tamil Nadu, served as an officer in the Haryana cadre.

According to him, lateral entry was not always undesirable. He pointed to V. Krishnamurthy, former CEO of BHEL, SAIL, Maruti Udyog Ltd, and GAIL; the agricultural scientist M.S. Swaminathan; the technocrat R.V. Shahi; and the economists Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Manmohan Singh, all of whom joined at senior levels.

The trouble, said Devasahayam, started in 2018, when the DoPT put out an advertisement to recruit 10 Joint Secretaries and a few Deputy Secretaries. Despite opposition, the recruitment took place. In 2019, the DoPT began recruiting 450 officers at the levels of Joint Secretary, Deputy Secretary, and Director; this was close to 60 per cent of the strength of the Central government personnel at that level. Despite opposition from within and outside, some 63 people were inducted. “Now they want to bring in 45 more. This has reduced direct recruitment from the IAS,” he said.

According to Devasahayam, if specialists are required they can be recruited from within the cadre. There are highly technical people in the IAS with specialisations. Any person in the corporate sector with similar years of experience might not know enough about governance, he said. There was a worry that private sector people inducted through lateral recruitment would initiate policies favourable to certain corporate entities. The second danger, Devasahayam said, was the induction of a large number of people from the RSS, more so after the ban had been lifted on government servants joining the organisation.

While there is no harm in bringing specialists, there are brilliant IIT and IIM graduates in the IAS, and the government could create a special cadre from within. “Have specialisations but do not dilute,” he said. “How can one expect a person coming from the corporate sector to coordinate with the States? There is no gain in this kind of lateral entry.”

According to Devasahayam, lateral entry at a certain level is fine, but it cannot be a regular recruitment process. “Is it so difficult for the government to find a few persons from the reserved categories? It will find a few names aligned to its ideology and may not even fill the posts as is the case already with the Central government. The opposition parties have not seen through the game. The advertisement will be issued again; this time with provisions for reservation. But the posts will remain vacant,” he said.

Officers on deputation

The other issue is to get commitment from such lateral appointees. An officer on deputation or contract might not have a stake in the job; three years is too short a time. “I think the idea is to recruit their favourite corporate people and those who missed the bus for the IAS,” said Devasahayam. “They will be ‘conferred IAS’ just as State service officers are done. Only 60 per cent are direct recruits in the IAS; others are ‘conferred IAS’. Those recruited from the pool of State Administrative Officers and State Public Service Commissions are ‘conferred IAS’. Lateral entry will be for those who can’t come in through the front door.”

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K. Sujatha Rao, former Union Secretary, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, agreed. “The government should have proposed lateral entry at very senior policy levels, the way Manmohan Singh or Montek Singh Ahluwalia were inducted. But such eminent people have to be invited, not recruited through the UPSC.” Rao added that to make up for shortage of personnel, the government should increase the intake at the UPSC entrance level and, in the short run, use contractual appointments, which is already being done.

Rao was sceptical about the government gaining anything. “Someone from the private sector will get a complete inside view of policymaking and make good contacts; their market value will be high when they leave. I doubt whether the government can gain much. It’s a different matter if it’s a permanent recruitment. No harm in providing for reservation, but why such recruitments are being made in the first place needs to be clarified,” she said.

Whether the U-turn on lateral appointments is really a climbdown for the government is doubtful.

The government has made it clear that it will institutionalise lateral entry through the UPSC and provide for reservation against lateral entry posts in Group A posts.

The opposition parties may actually have made it easier for the government to do exactly what it wants. Not only has the number of jobs in the Central government shrunk (see tables), there are fewer people from reserved categories in Group A and B jobs, and there is a disproportionate representation of them in Groups C and D. In all likelihood, the posts will be left vacant citing the “non-availability” of reserved category candidates.

The BJP was a fairly insignificant player in the political landscape of Haryana until 2014. The Narendra Modi wave in the Lok Sabha election that year was enough to carry the BJP to a convincing victory in the Assembly election held later that year; the party won 47 of the 90 seats and tasted power on its own for the first time in the State. In 2019, it won 40 seats—46 is needed for a simple majority—but was able to return to power with the support of Dushyant Chautala’s Jannayak Janta Party (JJP), which won 10 seats.

In October, the party will complete a decade in office, but a third term appears a bleak prospect as of now: it has the baggage of anti-incumbency and a below par performance in the general election that might go against it. However, the BJP is pulling out all the stops to ensure a hat trick of wins because a loss in Haryana will dent its image further after its less than stellar performance in the Lok Sabha election. In Haryana, the BJP and the Congress shared the 10 seats in the State equally; in 2019 the BJP had won all the seats.

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The Congress is the favourite as of now but is grappling with internal strife as its leaders talk in different tongues and do not appear to be on the same page. Indeed, the coming Assembly election, most analysts say, is the Congress’ to lose.

JJP, Azad in alliance

The JJP on August 27 announced an alliance with Chandrashekhar Azad’s Aazad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram) for the upcoming Assembly election. Azad, the Bhim Army leader, who was elected to the Lok Sabha from Nagina in Uttar Pradesh, will be making his first foray into Haryana. The JJP will contest 70 seats and the Aazad Samaj Party 20.

Regional outfits that once ruled the roost in Haryana, such as the Indian National Lok Dal led by Abhay Chautala, son of former Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala, and the JJP were decimated in the general election. Yet, these Jat-dominated outfits are confident of making a comeback in the Assembly election.

The Aam Aadmi Party, too, fancies its chances. In the general election, it contested, unsuccessfully, the Kurukshetra seat as an ally of the Congress. The utterances of some Congress leaders indicate that the alliance is unlikely to extend to the Assembly election.

Confident BJP

Despite the odds stacked against it, the BJP is not unduly rattled. Party leaders said that they had learnt their lessons from the Lok Sabha electoral setback and were confident of the party overcoming the odds. The party is hopeful of harnessing the strength and resourcefulness of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh cadre in the campaign, unlike last time when the cadre’s efforts were seemingly half-hearted.

The BJP’s confidence stems from its vote share in the general election. Despite losing half of the seats, it garnered a healthy vote share of over 46 per cent. However, this is a sharp fall of about 12 per cent from the 58 per cent it had in 2019. The Congress ended up with 43.6 per cent, a bump of more than 15 per cent from 2019.

The contest, for now, is more or less evenly poised, with the Congress enjoying a slight advantage.

Consider this: At the Assembly segment level in the Lok Sabha election, the BJP won 44 of the 90 Assembly segments. The Congress was a close second, leading in 42 segments; the AAP led in 4 segments in Kurukshetra.

This performance in the Assembly segments puts the INDIA bloc marginally ahead, and the onus is on the Congress to keep the momentum going. The party is known to inflict self-goals and has not been very good at converting votes into seats in elections.

Congress infighting

Former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and other senior Congress leaders in the State, such as Kumari Selja and Randeep Surjewala, are often at loggerheads. Despite the All India Congress Committee’s efforts to put out internal fires, the embers continue to glow—the warring factions have even announced separate statewide yatras to underscore their clout.

The 76-year-old Hooda has indicated that this could be his last election, which has in a way worsened the crisis within the party. The senior Hooda, much to the chagrin of Selja and Surjewala, will want the high command to name him as the chief ministerial face. Besides, he is also keen on passing the baton to his son Deepender Singh Hooda (46), an MP.

The pre-eminence of the junior Hooda could sharpen the existing fault lines. Selja, MP from Sirsa, has already made her dissent noticeable by objecting to attempts to name Bhupinder Hooda as the Chief Minister face. She has maintained that the party does not project a chief ministerial face when in the opposition.

Ticket allocation is another process that is likely to fuel dissent. It was in play ahead of the general election when senior leaders Kiran Choudhry and her daughter, Shruti Choudhry, left the party to join the BJP after Shruti was denied the ticket. The Congress high command knows full well that the senior Hooda is indispensable as a Jat leader with a pan-Haryana appeal; Selja and Surjewala are not in his league.

However, for all its confidence, the BJP has a lot of ground to cover. In May, just before the Lok Sabha election, three independent MLAs withdrew thei support to the government, leaving it with a wafer-thin majority.

The party’s strategy is to take steps to offset anti-incumbency and also woo the sizeable Dalit vote. It has not tasted much success in the latter, losing the reserved seats of Ambala and Sirsa in the general election.

The party’s electoral strategy lays emphasis on the consolidation of the non-Jat vote, including Dalits and Punjabis. The flip side, though, is that this has led to counter-polarisation of the Jat vote, which cost the BJP dear. The Congress gained by pitching the “alienation of Jat” theory against the BJP.

Other factors

The Jat vote share, a sizeable 33 per cent, will remain crucial to the outcome of any election in Haryana. The Congress’ gain in vote share in the Lok Sabha election can be attributed not just to gains in Jat-dominated constituencies such as Rohtak, Hisar, and Sonipat, but also to the split in the Dalit vote.

The Congress is keeping its ammunition dry, even as the party’s draft manifesto promises a social security pension of Rs.6,000 a month, restoration of the old pension scheme, a 100 square yard plot for the poor, and 300 units of free electricity, among others.

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The AAP is riding high after its senior leader Manish Sisodia was released on bail in early August. AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal’s wife, Sunita, is leading the charge in what is Kejriwal’s home State.

Although the AAP lost in Kurukshetra, its vote share in Haryana rose from 0.3 per cent to 3.94 per cent. Ahead of the election, Sunita Kejriwal launched five “Kejriwal’s guarantees”, including free electricity, education, medical treatment, and employment. The party also announced a monthly aid of Rs.1,000 to every woman in the State, a promise that was also made in Punjab but remains unfulfilled.

The JJP was unceremoniously axed by the BJP as an ally just ahead of the Lok Sabha election. Party leaders believe the Assembly election is a different ball game altogether. In the 2019 Assembly election, the JJP emerged kingmaker when the BJP won 40 seats and the Congress 31. The JJP, with 10 seats and a sizeable 14.8 per cent vote share, held the key then. It brokered a deal with the BJP, and Dushyant Chautala was made Deputy Chief Minister.

Skewed ticket allocation is likely to throw up turncoats and Independents galore, and that may have an impact on government formation in case there is a hung Assembly this year.

Gautam Dheer has been covering policy and politics in Punjab, Haryana, and Himachal Pradesh for over two decades.

“Made our house with blood

Delhi tries to scare us with water”

Thus reads a couplet from a popular poet in Dhaka: Hasan Robayet. He has been a key figure in the recent student movement in Bangladesh that ousted Sheikh Hasina on August 5. Since then, Hasina has remained in India, which has only added to the anti-India sentiments brewing among the Bangladeshi people for decades. Now, many are blaming the flood, which has inundated eight districts in Bangladesh, on India for opening the gates of some upstream barrages and dams following torrential rains, which has at least partly contributed to the unprecedented scale of the disaster. (India, however, has issued denials.) Even before the flood and the student movement, Bangladeshis had organised an “India out” movement where they called for a complete boycott of Indian goods. As such, anti-India sentiments have been rife in Bangladesh for quite some time now.

But why? Perhaps the chief reason, apart from from communal sentiments held by a small section, is that the vast majority of the population believes that India has supported the dictatorial regime of Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh for far too long. It is a widely believed hypothesis that Hasina was able to hold the 2014, 2019 and 2024 elections, which saw massive irregularities and were often boycotted by the opposition parties, due to the Indian government’s support. In return for this support, Hasina provided India with a wide array of benefits, such as transit through Bangladesh, use of its ports, building a controversial coal-fired power plant near the Sundarbans to serve Indian purposes, and more.

Also Read | Power has shifted in Bangladesh, but old habits die hard

But all this invincible-looking “house of cards” needed was a firm push to come crashing down. What began as a student revolt against an unfair job quota system—a fight that had seen success in 2018 only to be overturned by an apex court decision in 2024—quickly spiralled into a nationwide uprising, fueled by widespread grievances against Hasina’s increasingly authoritarian rule, marked by injustice, inflation, corruption, and a suffocating suppression of basic rights. The government’s choice to bypass dialogue in favour of a brutal crackdown by police and armed Chhatra League (a student wing of Awami League) goons resulted in over 300 deaths, serving only to fan the flames of dissent. As vast cadres of private university students followed the public university protesters to the streets, and eventually, the masses rallied behind them, the writing was on the wall for Hasina’s reign.

The military’s decision to halt the violence and ensure Hasina’s safe exit marked a turning point. However, the jubilation of the “second liberation” that followed was short-lived. The law-and-order situation broke down completely as police, BGB and RAB—the erstwhile forces used as tools of repression by the old regime—fled their stations for fear of mob justice, a vacuum criminals of all kinds took advantage of. In addition to widespread robberies, the main driver of violence was revenge against Awami League leaders, affiliates or supporters. Minorities, who generally support Awami League, and tend to be an easier target, were certainly not spared.

Attacks on non-political Hindu homes and businesses also took place. These were possibly perpetrated by vested interest groups or communal forces coveting Hindu properties. This unfortunate and shameful targeting of minorities in Bangladesh is not new. It began as early as the birth of Pakistan in 1947 and has persisted even during the height of Awami League rule, which traditionally claimed to protect minority rights. What was new, however, was that many Islamic leaders and Madrasah students stood alongside common people to protect minority establishments, a beautiful if rare symbol of communal harmony during this troubled time. This complex and nuanced nature of the truth was largely missed by international media, and worse, many Indian outlets exaggerated the numbers, aggressively weaponized misinformation and mischaracterised incidents to serve their own political purposes and discredit Bangladesh’s pro-democracy movement.

Hasina’s sudden flight, which caught even most Awami League leaders by surprise, not only shook the very foundations of Bangladesh’s political landscape—it also left behind a constitutional vacuum. The constitutional changes made by Hasina’s regime to entrench its power had left no clear path for another “caretaker” government. Into this vacuum stepped an “interim” government, led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, a choice unilaterally decided and pre-emptively announced by the victorious student leaders.

Although a reputed and experienced set of advisers has been appointed to lead the various ministries, the interim government faces a gargantuan task. While the law and order situation is slowly returning to normalcy, the Hasina regime has left behind a series of decrepit and deeply politicised institutions, having done irreparable damage to the executive, judiciary, bureaucracy, academia and financial sectors over 15 years. For example, Sheikh Hasina’s private industry and investment adviser Salman Fazlur Rahman alone holds over 1.5 Billion US dollars of default loans, crippling many banks and earning the nickname “The architect of default culture”. Hasina and her cronies siphoned off some $150 billion out of the country in the 15 years of her rule, which is more than double the current (and highest ever) national budget and much greater than our current outstanding foreign debt of $94 billion.

Saving the economy from collapse and returning some of the laundered assets seems to be a high priority, aside from all the constitutional, systemic and electoral reforms, and delivering justice for the “July massacre”, that this government has been given the popular mandate to do. But just as the government was gearing up to take on that task, it must now deal with the urgent flood crisis. Each of these tasks is made doubly difficult due to the numerous beneficiaries, co-conspirators, and loyalists of the old regime both abroad and at home, embedded deep within the bureaucratic machinery, army, police and other institutions. As a result, even the all-important question of when the next free, participatory, and fair democratic election will be held remains unanswered, even though Muhammad Yunus has repeatedly highlighted that as the ultimate objective of his government.

Notwithstanding India’s rebuttal of allegations that it intentionally opened the dams in an act of sabotage, the people in Bangladesh are angry. India must act urgently to earn back the trust of the Bangladeshi people. India needs to decide, in the shortest time window possible, if it will build a friendly relationship with the Bangladeshi people, and respect its sovereignty, or choose to side with a fallen, disgraced and murderous dictator at the expense of alienating its important neighbour further.

Also Read | Bangladesh’s ‘liberation’ is breeding a new intolerance

It should be seen as taking steps to stop efforts at misinformation and should not be seen as extending continued support to Hasina. Delhi should not be perceived to be trying to sway the upcoming elections in its own favour, whether through overt or covert means. Last but not least, it needs to demonstrate goodwill by ensuring fair water-sharing agreements and coming clean about its role in the ongoing flood and refraining from using aggressive tactics on the borders. The people of Bangladesh will accept nothing less than a complete overhaul of the India-Bangladesh relations. The perception in Bangladesh is that it has historically always been treated as India’s vassal state.

As Hasan Robayet’s couplet reminds us, we have (re-)built our house with blood. The resurgent people of Bangladesh will not allow anyone, be it Delhi or any other power, to wash away their hard-earned freedom with floods of water or communal fear-mongering. It is Bangladesh’s time to assert its sovereignty, heal its own wounds, and step confidently into a future of its own making.

Rubayat Khan is a political analyst and co-founder of Jagoree, a citizen’s activism platform.

Anupam Debashish Roy is a PhD student at Oxford. Both serve as co-editors of Muktipotro, an online free media establishment.

WATCH | Saba Naqvi in conversation with Yogendra Yadav

We are criminally guilty because we took our Constitution for granted, says the political activist and politician.
| Video Credit:
Interview by Saba Naqvi; Camera: Dipesh Arora; Production Assistants: Vitasta Kaul and Vedaant Lakhera; Editing by Samson Ronald K.; Produced by Jinoy Jose P.

In this wide-ranging and insightful interview, renowned political analyst and activist Yogendra Yadav offers a penetrating look at the current state of Indian politics and society. Speaking to Frontline, Yadav draws on his unique perspective as both a commentator and participant in the political process to analyse some of the most pressing issues facing India today.

In the 2024 general election, he was a phenomenal predictor of electoral outcome. “Indian society is a pyramid. The top of the pyramid has been captured by the BJP in terms of caste, class, and gender. The bottom of the pyramid is the biggest social force to defend the Constitution, republic, and democracy in the country. So future politics has to be politics of the bottom of the pyramid. BJP’s political strategy has been to capture the top of the pyramid and walk away with a few slices from the bottom,” he tells Frontline.

Saba Naqvi is a Delhi-based journalist and author of four books who writes on politics and identity issues.