Can BJP hold on to 10 seats in Haryana?

Nine months after the devastating Nuh riots and during the Lok Sabha elections of 2024, The Squirrels reached District Mewat of Haryana, a Muslim-dominated area to get the pulse of the local voters. While some voters, identifying as illiterate people, said their issues are entirely secular — especially employment and welfare schemes for the poor — they also said that the police are particularly hostile to their community and they would vote for a change.

A Muslim resident said the community would have left India but for the intervention of Gandhiji who requested the Muslims of Mewat to stay in India. 

Former MLA from Nuh Habibur-ur Rehman slammed the Agniveer scheme for recruitment in the security forces by saying the youth are not in a condition where they can either pursue education, get trained or look for jobs suiting their skill sets. He painted a dark picture of the economy across the nation.

Rehman does not think the BJP can repeat its 2019 performance. Predictably, he dismissed the saffron party completely, also citing last year’s farmer protests as a reason. Believing in the conspiracy theory that elections can be manipulated using EVMs, he said that if the BJP were to once again win a majority of the 10 seats in Haryana, it would be because the party tampered with the machines.

Can BJP hold on to 10 seats in Haryana?

The Congress is claiming here, as it is expectedly doing across the country, that the BJP failed to deliver on the promises it had made 5 years ago. But shouldn't these claims be taken with a pinch of salt?

Leaders of the 'saffron' party and several ordinary Hindu voters that The Squirrels talked to do not share the negative sentiments expressed by politicians of the Congress and Muslim citizens of Mewat.