Neeraj Chopra took gold at Tokyo Olympics in 2020 with a javelin throw of 87.58 meters. Though he improved his performance at Paris Olympics this year with a throw of 89.45 meters and everyone expected him to win the gold again, Chopra had to settle for a silver as Arshad Nadeem performed even better with a huge throw of 92.97 meters.Chopra acknowledged Nadeem’s ‘hard work’ and congratulated him, saying he will work harder too.This sporting analogy somewhat fits the Haryana election battle too.Everyone expected the Congress to win here, and the party did improve its vote share by a big margin of 11 per cent — from 28 per cent in 2019 when it had secured 31 seats to 39 per cent now when it ended up with 37 seats but short of the majority.What the Congress did not factor in was that the BJP, at its end, was ‘working harder’ in Haryana, and they too improved their vote share by over 3 per cent — from 36.5 per cent in 2019 — to win.The disturbing development now is that the Congress, in a rather unprecedented way, has refused to accept the results in Haryana, alleging electoral malpractices.In the sporting analogy, this is a case of being a ‘bad sport’ or showing a lack of sportsmanship by being a ‘sore loser’.It also puts the 37 winning candidates of the Congress, including Vinesh Phogat and Randeep Surjewala’s son Aditya, in a piquant position — they have celebrated their wins but their party is questioning the results.Third Heartbreak for CongressIt is not the first time that the Congress presumed a win and ended up on the losing side. The story in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh was similar last November where an over-confident Congress bit the dust. Haryana is a repeat of the same.While the Congress went about speculating over chief ministerial faces even while the election was on in Haryana, BJP seems to have been studiously working harder on the ground on its election strategy. BJP closed its ears to the perception being built by Congress of a run-away win and worked hard on the voter basics.The Congress thought issues of farmer anger, wrestler protests, and Agniveer would see it through. These may have been the issues, but only for the Jat community in the state which has about 21-22 per cent population.These issues did not seem to resonate with a wider section of the rest of the electorate who perhaps looked at the BJP’s record in the state in the last decade on the issue of development and feared the return of a Jat-dominated rule under Bhupinder Singh Hooda.That explains why a big chunk of OBC, upper caste, and non-Jatav Dalit population seems to have voted heavily in favour of BJP, as the CSDS data shows.The Congress did get a big chunk of votes of the Jats, Jatavs among the Dalits, and Muslims, but the consolidation of voters on the BJP’s side was bigger.The other big factor was the infighting in the Congress between the Hooda and Kumari Selja camps hurting the party’s chances, which even Rahul Gandhi had to acknowledge at a review meeting of the Congress on Thursday. Multiple party leaders have spoken of the same publicly too.The BJP, however, eliminated all infighting by replacing Manohar Lal Khattar with Nayab Singh Saini as the chief minister six months ago and fighting the Haryana election firmly under Saini’s leadership.The Congress should stop playing the ‘sore loser’ and damaging the country’s much-acclaimed democratic electoral process and its institutions. Selective questioning of the election results defies all logic.Such an approach does not bode well for the Grand Old Party in future election battles in Jharkhand and Maharashtra too. It should either get all its 37 winning candidates in Haryana to resign as well or congratulate the BJP, look within, and move on.
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