To woo the Dalit voters in the State, the Jannayak Janata Party (JJP) on Tuesday announced an alliance with Chandrashekhar Azad’s Azad Samaj Party (Kanshi Ram). It will be the first political foray of Azad, the Bhim Army leader, into Haryana, but comes in the wake of his win from the Nagina Lok Sabha seat.

The two parties have also finalised the seat-sharing arrangement, with JJP contesting 70 seats and ASP 20 seats. This announcement was made in a joint press conference in Delhi by senior JJP leader and former Deputy Chief Minister Dushyant Chautala and ASP leader and MP Chandrashekhar Azad.

Talking to reporters, Chautala stated that the JJP and ASP alliance has laid the foundation for taking Haryana forward. He assured that both parties would contest all 90 seats together with full force. The alliance will form a youth government in Haryana, uniting all 36 communities and empowering the poor, farmers, laborers, women, and all other sections of society. Chautala also said that the people of Haryana are eager to remove the BJP, and JJP has made it clear that they will not align with the BJP again.

On the occasion, ASP leader Chandrashekhar Azad emphasized that their primary goal is to take Haryana forward, as the state needs to become more powerful. The alliance would fight for the rights of the poor, farmers, and laborers, fulfilling the dreams of Jananayak Chaudhary Devi Lal and Kanshi Ram.

The JJP, which won 10 seats in its poll debut in the 2019 Assembly elections, had emerged as a kingmaker in the hung House that followed. Its support to the BJP allowed the latter to form the government, and got Dushyant the deputy chief ministership. However, since parting ways with the BJP earlier this year, the JJP has been on the decline. Seven of the JJP’s 10 MLAs have quit the party, with one joining the Congress, and two expected to go with the BJP. The JJP-ASP alliance has its eye on the potentially formidable caste combination of the JJP’s Jat support base and the ASP’s expected Dalit backing. The Jats make up 26% of Haryana’s population.

In the 2019 Assembly elections, four of the seats won by the JJP were SC-reserved constituencies. Earlier, the Abhay Chautala-led Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) – the original party from which Dushyant broke away to form the JJP – and Mayawati-led BSP announced that they would revive a previous tie-up for the Vidhan Sabha polls. The SC-reserved seats in Haryana have been won mostly by the Congress and BJP. In the 2019 Assembly polls, the BJP won five of the 17 SC seats in Haryana, and the Congress seven, with the JJP winning four and one seat going to an Independent.