Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar will meet BJP Working President JP Nadda and party’s Haryana in-charge Anil Jain on Friday even as the ruling party looks to cobble up a majority in the 90-member Haryana Assembly after falling short of the half-way mark by five seats in the pollresults declared on Thursday BJP continues to explore the possibility of attracting a sufficient number of the seven victorious independents to form the government. Khattar has already staked claim but he needs six more MLAs to get a second term as Haryana chief minister. Dushyant Chautala indicated in an interview to HT on Thursday that his party had “no plans” to support the BJP.“We will have our legislative [party] meeting and then decide the course of action,” he said.

The BJP’s campaign slogan--abki baar 75 paar (this time itwill be over 75 seats)—couldn’t live up to its promise as the party wasrestricted to only 40 seats. This comes mere months after the party swept all10 Lok Sabha seats.

The Congress, on the other hand, performed better than mostexit polls had predicted, winning 31 seats -- more than doubling its previoustally of 15.

BJP is still the single largest party and can stitch togethera majority if some of the seven independents, one Indian National Lok Dal(INLD) MLA and one Haryana Lokhit Party (HLP) legislator, decide to back it.TheCongress too has not given up hope on government formation in Haryana, itstalismanic Jat leader and former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda urged allopposition parties to come together to keep the BJP out on Thursday.

All contesting ministers of the previous Khattar governmentexcept Anil Vij (Ambala city) and Banwari Lal (Bawal) lost in the October 21polls. Heavyweights like Capt Abhimanyu (Narnaul), Ram Bilas Sharma(Mahendergarh), Om Prakash Dhankar (Badli), Krishan Lal Panwar (Israna), KavitaJain (Sonipat) and, Krishan Kumar Bedi (Shahabad) were handed crushing defeats.Two other ministers, Manish Grover (Rohtak city) and Karan Dev Kamboj (Indri),lost by slender margins.Chief Minister Khattar won by over 45,000 votes fromKarnal and ministers Banwari Lal and Anil Vij also won by over 32,000 and20,000 votes respectively, to save the BJP blushes.

State BJP president Subhash Barala too was defeated by JJP’s Devender Babli by over 52,000 votes from the Tohana assembly seat in Fatehabad district.

Of the 11 Indian National Lok Dal legislators, who joined the BJP before elections, seven lost. However, the two Congress leaders, whojoined the BJP, won.