The meeting between BJP president Rajnath Singh and INlD chief Om Prakash Chautala at Ram Manohar lohia Hospital in New Delhi has triggered speculations in Haryana on realignment of political alliance ahead of the 2014 lok Sabha elections.
Chautala has been jailed for 10 years for irregularities in appointment of JBT teachers in 2000. He is in hospital in connection with medical problems.
BJP chief was accompanied by party vice-president Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, both reached at hospital on May 16 morning and remained there for half an hour.
INlD has been with the BJP in the past but in the last Assembly polls in 2009, it severed its links and fought alone. later it entered into an alliance with the Kuldeep Bishnoi led Haryana Janhit Congress.
According to some State BJP leaders, there are possibilities of INlD and BJP alliance for the 2014 lok Sabha polls. Assembly elections are also due in Haryana in 2014. The HJC-BJP alliance has not taken off politically as none of the parties seem to have gained.
In the upcoming local bodies elections in seven municipal corporation of the state, the differences between BJP and HJC have come out in the open as BJP announced that it will contest the election all alone without support of its ally. HJC had already announced that though they will not fight elections yet their party members are free to contest even against the BJP candidates and this will not be considered as anti-party activity.
The ground work for the possible INlD alliance with BJP started in 2012 when Chautala met then BJP chief Nitin Gadkari at Delhi. It could not materialise then as some of the senior leaders in BJP were not interested in an alliance with INlD.
A section in the BJP thinks that they will have to shake hands with Jat leader Chautala if they want to gain from the anti-incumbency in the state and the “get-well-soon courtesy call” on May 16 should be seen in this context.
The state leaders of the two parties do not want to comment on this sudden development, and are terming this meeting as only “get-well-soon courtesy call”.
BJP MlA Anil Vij, told The Pioneer, “It will be premature to say anything on it, as of now it was only get well soon courtesy call”. Asked about the possibility of alliance, he said that there is possibility of anything in politics.
In 2009, INlD had alone won 31 seats in the assembly polls after drawing a blank in the parliamentary elections and had showed that its vote bank was intact in the state. The results indicated that had BJP fought the polls with INlD, the results would have been different and Congress may not have returned to power.