 "Congress may snatch defeat from jaws of victory in Rajasthan")
The party declared its first list of 63 candidates two days ago. Internal discussion suggested that as incumbency was weighing against the candidate rather than the party or government, a 40 per cent reshuffle of MLAs could help shrug off the burden of incumbency.
Instead, not only have all 29 sitting MLAs been repeated, but among the so-called new faces, one of the candidates who was an MLA once upon a time and who lost the last election has been replaced – by her mother! Chatribai Sahariya, will contest the election from Kishanganj instead of her daughter, former MLA Nirmala Sahariya.
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Rajasthan is notorious for voting in the opposition in both the Assembly and Lok Sabha polls. At its best the Congress has managed to get 156 seats out of 200 in the state, while its worst performance has been 56. The BJP’s best performance – Vasundhara Raje’s first term as Chief Minister – has been 120 out of 200 seats, a tally never touched before or since. Its lowest has been 33 seats.
Observers say there is no wave in the state. Because of Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot’s free medicine and pension scheme, his government is popular. But Gehlot’s mainstay (he is from the Mali community, belonging to the Other Backward Classes) his caste, is doubtful if he will become the chief minister again even if the Congress pulls through: because as of the last ten days, Union Minister and Gehlot’s biggest detractor CP Joshi has descended on the state, giving rise to new hope among the Brahmins that he might be given the chance he lost the last time around when he lost the 2008 election from the Nathdwara assembly constituency by one vote and had to abandon the dream of becoming Chief Minister.
There are other things that are working against the Congress in Rajasthan. The Bikaner division that sends 21 seats to the assembly is a region under the influence of Dera Sacha Sauda, a religious sect that Muslims view with favour and Dalits throng to. The leader of the sect, Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh has been courted by the BJP while inexplicably the Congress has kept its distance. In the last few weeks, Singh has been met and greeted at all major religious congregations by senior state BJP leaders – on one occasion even by Vasundhara Raje, especially around Ganganagar which has the thickest concentration of Dalits in Rajasthan. The message this has sent to the constituencies along the Rajasthan-Haryana border is: the BJP is sympathetic to Dera Sacha Sauda. Singh himself is embroiled in several criminal cases.
The BJP, on the other hand, may have lost an important weapon in the caste battle. Influential Jat leader Gyan Prakash Pilania’s son Naresh, who had sought a BJP nomination and didn’t get it, has joined hands with a new party. Pilania Senior, whose Rajya Sabha term comes to an end in a few months is likely to resign from the Rajya Sabha and unfurl the banner of revolt against the BJP. This means the Jat vote will then be up for grabs.
The central issue seems to be one of leadership: the somewhat timorous Ashok Gehlot pitted against Vasundhara Raje who didn’t resign from the leadership of the opposition even when expressly ordered to do so by then party president Rajnath Singh. Raje and her chief detractors in the party – led by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in the state – have made up to live to fight another day. The local opinion is: Opposition-wards Ho !