 "LS polls: The electoral litmus test for Rajasthan's CM Bhajan Lal Sharma")
Following the BJP’s victory in the 2023 Assembly election, when Rajasthan in-charge Rajnath Singh opened the slip and announced the name of the new Rajasthan chief minister, Bhajan Lal Sharma, a sense of disbelief and betrayal was evident on the face of two-time Rajasthan CM and stalwart leader Vasundhara Raje.
It wasn’t just Raje. Other party stalwarts too found it hard to digest the fact that the relatively inexperienced Sharma was chosen by the central leadership.
The BJP’s choice of CM was indeed unconventional. First-time MLA Bhajanlal Sharma was chosen over stalwarts like Vasundhara Raje, Kirorilal Meena, and Satish Poonia.
Opposition Congress and RLP called Sharma a ‘Parchi CM’ and his government as ‘Parchi Sarkar’ and accused BJP of dictatorship and forcing 'high command’s' decision against people’s will. ‘Parchi’ is a Hindi term for slip.
Days after taking the chair, Sharma got a chance to prove his political acumen when the election commission announced the by-election on Karanpur seat of Sri Ganganagar district.
Elections in Karanpur were postponed due to the death of Congress candidate Gurmeet Singh Kunnar
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The CM led from the front.
The BJP fielded former minister and veteran politician Surendra Pal Singh against Congress’ Rupinder Singh -- the son of the deceased MLA.
To influence the voters, CM Sharma appointed the BJP candidate as a minister in his cabinet and visited the constituency to ask for votes. But, the ruling BJP lost the by-poll, putting a question mark over the political mettle of the man in charge, the Chief Minister himself.
12 constituencies of Rajasthan, out of the total 25, voted on Friday in the first phase of ongoing Lok Sabha polls. The remaining 13 will vote on April 26.
The BJP, under Narendra Modi and state leader Vasundhara Raje’s leadership, won all 25 Lok Sabha seats in Rajasthan in the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP fought in alliance with Hanuman Beniwal Rashtriya Loktantrik Party.
The alliance won all 25 seats with a huge vote share of 59.1%. With the track record of BJP in the past two Lok Sabha elections, CM Sharma has a daunting task with Congress fighting the election as INDIA bloc in alliance with stalwarts like Hanuman Beniwal, who won the Nagaur constituency in alliance with BJP in 2019. India Bloc fielded comrade Ummedaram from the Sikar constituency, which had a reasonable presence of CPI (M).
The case for Rajasthan is different from Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh where the BJP also chose unconventional and reasonably fresh faces for CM.
In Rajasthan, even in the Assembly Elections, BJP won 115 seats out of 199 in a tough contest. The difference of votes in both parties was just 2.14% or 6,44,185 votes with BJP getting 41.69% of the votes and Congress getting 69 seats with 39.55% votes. On more than two dozen seats, the difference between the candidates was below 5000 votes.
Most opinion polls predict that repeating the 2014 and 2019 elections in Rajasthan will be a daunting task for the BJP with turncoats, caste formulas, and the Congress party with an alliance posing a challenge.
In contrast to other parts of the country, Congress in Rajasthan remains a formidable force with stalwarts like former CM Ashok Gehlot, state party chief Govind Singh Dotasra, Sachin Pilot campaigning for the party while BJP’s tallest leader and former chief minister Vasundhara Raje Scindia remained restricted to Jhalawar seat, where her son, sitting MP Dushyant Singh, is contesting against Congress’ Urmila Jain Bhaya in a bid for a fifth term in the Lower House.
According to surveys, eight seats of Rajasthan where the election results can turn the fate of Sharma include Churu, Kota-Bundi, Sikar, Nagaur, Banswara, Jalore, Jodhpur, and Barmer.
In Churu, the Congress persuaded MP Rahul Kaswan to join their party amidst internal strife with former Leader of Opposition Rajendra Rathore. Subsequently, Kaswan resigned as MP and was nominated as the Congress candidate for Churu.
The BJP fielded a new face, paralympic Devendra Jhajharia. Churu, located in northern Rajasthan, is predominantly Jat, with candidates from both parties belonging to this community.
The Nagaur seat, also dominated by Jats, witnesses an interesting battle between former Congress MP Jyoti Mirdha, now the BJP candidate, and Rashtriya Loktantrik Party (RLP) convener Hanuman Beniwal, who is contesting in alliance with the Congress.
Both Mirdha and Beniwal are longstanding rivals. Beniwal, an influential Jat leader, won this seat in 2019 under a BJP alliance, defeating Mirdha, who was then the Congress candidate.
In Sikar, former CPI (M) MLA Amraram allied with the Congress to challenge BJP's two-time MP Swami Sumedhanand. Despite PCC president Govind Singh Dotasra’s assembly constituency being under the Sikar Lok Sabha seat, the party opted for this alliance, anticipating a tough fight against the BJP.
In the Jalore Lok Sabha seat, the Congress fielded former Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot’s Son Vaibhav Gahlot who fought the 2019 polls from the Jodhpur constituency against Union Minister Gajendra Singh Sekhawat. While BJP fielded grassroots leader Lumbaram Choudhary.
The Barmer seat which become a hotspot for the media as the famous candidate young MLA from Sheo Ravinder Sigh Bhati made the fight triangular by contesting Independently against Union Minister Kailash Choudhary from BJP while Congress has fielded Ummeda Ram who has joined Congress quitting RLP.