Outlook English - Print Subscribers Copy Outlook English, 06 August 2018 | Page 16
POLLS AHEAD
PTI
by Salik Ahmad
W
ITH Prime Minister Naren-
dra Modi and BJP presi-
dent Amit Shah visiting
Rajasthan within a span of
two weeks, the state is heat-
ing up to the assembly polls
due in December. Over the past 25
years, the state government has been
run in turns by the BJP and the Con-
gress with an almost religious regu-
larity. As the BJP’s Vasundhararaje
completes her second term as CM, the
anti-incumbency odds may well fav
our the Congress. Modi and Shah have
probably sensed this, and hence the
urgency to make a head start.
Like in 2013, elections will be held in
Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chh
attisgarh together. That time, when the
BJP managed a clear majority in all
three states and it was projected as the
first solid testimony to the might of the
“Modi wave”, the most impressive win
was in Rajasthan, where the party
bagged 163 seats, up from 78 in 2008.
Losing this major state in the Hindi
belt a few months before the 2019
general elections would, therefore, be a
big setback for the saffron party.
The BJP’s traditional votebank here
includes the Rajputs, who are pretty
miffed this time. “Why did the BJP not
appoint Gajendra Singh Shekhawat as
the state party chief?” asks Giriraj Singh
Lotwara, who heads the Shri Rajput
Sabha (SRS) and has famously called the
BJP a “Bohut Jhoothi Party (very untru
stworthy party)”. “Vasundhara was ele
vated by Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, a
Rajput, but she opposed Gajendra Singh’s
elevation on caste grounds. The party
also treated senior leader Jaswant Singh
with disrespect and denied him a ticket
in the 2014 general elections.”
Lotwara, however, is quick to clarify
that the Rajputs, who voted against the
BJP in the recent bypolls, are willing to
reconsider their attitude if the party
tries to be conciliatory.
Apparently, the Brahmins too are upset.
After MLA Ghanshyam Tiwari quit the
BJP over allegations of corruption,
high-handedness and favouritism aga
inst Vasundhara, messages accusing the
party of disrespecting Brahmins were
circulated on Brahmin-dominated
WhatApp groups like ‘Jai Parshuram Ji’.
Arguing that the BJP’s social engineer
16 OUTLOOK 6 August 2018
HOLDING FORT CM Vasundhararaje with state BJP chief M.L. Saini
No Desert
Storm So Far
All’s not well with the ruling BJP, but rival Congress
is yet to show it has the chutzpah to win Rajasthan
ing has failed miserably, Rajiv Gupta,
retired professor of sociology at the
University of Rajasthan, says anti-
incumbency will favour the Congress,
but it lacks the aggression needed at this
stage. “There have been numerous occa
sions when the Congress should have
camped on the roads in protest, but the
leaders have been quite lax. If this
According to retired
rofessor Rajiv Gupta,
p
there’s anti-incumbency,
but the Congress lacks
the aggression needed
at this stage.
doesn’t change, the BJP may trump the
Grand Old Party with its money, muscle
power and electoral mastery,” he says.
As the BJP’s CM candidate, Vasundhara
will undertake a 40-day yatra in August,
starting from the Charbhuja temple in
Rajsamand and covering 180 of the 200
constituencies. Nationalism and devel
opment will be the central themes. Her
two previous yatras were in 2003 and
2013, when she was trying to wrest
power from the Congress. She did not
take out a rally towards the end of her
first term as CM in 2008 because she
probably sensed it was a lost cause. With
Modi’s popularity backing her now and
given the uncertainty over whether she
can have another chance to be CM five