The quiet plotter of Haryana victory

It did not strike many immediately that Delhi’s former finance minister and leader of opposition has been the party’s prabhari (in-charge) for more than a year in Haryana.

When 74-year-old Mukhi was given a responsibility outside Delhi and that too in the ‘politically innocuous’ state of Haryana, many thought it was end of the road for the former Delhi University teacher. But there was a well-thought strategy behind Mukhi’s appointment, a Punjabi born at Dera Ghazi Khan in Pakistan whose family had shifted to Sohna in Haryana post partition. Later, he became an Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad activist during his student days at Kurukshetra University in Haryana. Given his old network and Haryana’s connect with Delhi, Mukhi was given the onerous job of reviving the party which won no seat in 2009 Lok Sabha polls and four in the Vidhan Sabha polls that followed.

Keeping a low profile, Mukhi galvanised the Punjabi and other BJP-sympathising communities through his old network. Given his amenable demenour, he managed to get various factions to agree to his strategies. With a general wave in favour of Narendra Modi and with party machinery in place in the state, BJP managed seven of the 10 Lok Sabha seats in May.

However, the challenge was to retain the momentum and Mukhi with his team including his co-incharge Anil Jain managed to put together a good campaign in addition to denting the base of rival parties especially the Congress. He got several top notch leaders including Congress Working Committee member Chowdhary Birender Singh among others to defect.