CM Ashok Gehlot led from the front, hopes to break the incumbent jinx; BJP hopes its Hindutva plus law-and-order decline campaign will work against Cong schemes
In a state where it has been a given for the past few decades that the incumbent will be voted out, this election like the last one seems set for a cliffhanger. If the BJP clawed back from a seeming position of disadvantage in 2018 to give the Congress a near scare and stop it 1 short of a majority, this time the combative Ashok Gehlot never let the BJP hit a stride when the initial expectation was that of a comfortable win by it.
Come result day, if the BJP is confident that its campaign targeting the Congress government on law and order and “appeasement politics” has hit home, Gehlot is gambling heavily on the popularity of his government’s welfare schemes. Both sides also expect the divide to be cleaved along urban-rural lines, with the BJP holding on to its urban lead and the Congress benefiting from its schemes in villages.
Incidentally, there was little to separate the manifestos of the two parties on various counts – farmers to jobs, women to schoolkids, health to LPG. If the BJP talked of special monitoring cells to watch ‘anti-Bharat forces’, the Congress promised ‘stringent legal measures for hate speech’ and ‘reconciliation committees’ to bring communities together.
The two people for whom these elections will define their political futures are Gehlot, 72, who withstood all pressures from within the party to hold on as CM, and Vasundhara Raje, 70, who could not get the nod as BJP CM face. While a comfortable victory will mean the Congress will not be able to deny Gehlot the CM post, notwithstanding Sachin Pilot, a comfortable victory for the BJP might translate into the party high command easing out Raje for good.
Of the state’s total 200 Assembly seats, polling will be held in 199, after the Congress candidate from Karanpur passed away.
Some other prominent faces who are spending anxious moments headed into result day, as they face a tough challenge, are Assembly Speaker and Congress veteran C P Joshi (Nathdwara); Congress state president Govind Singh Dotasra (Laxmangarh); and Leader of Opposition Rajendra Rathore (Taranagar).
While the BSP won 6 seats last time, and is contesting on 185, the notable also-rans may turn out to be the Rashtriya Loktantrik Party and Azad Samaj Party, which tied up in the hope of a winning Jat-SC combination. The RLP fielded 78 candidates, and the ASP 46.
Another outfit that is threatening to upset the calculations of parties is the Bharatiya Adivasi Party (BAP). This is particularly evident in Mewar, known to be the state’s bellwether region, where the tribals are leaning towards the BAP. Its president Mohanlal Roat, who is contesting from Sagwara, lists fears of dominant parties like the Congress and BJP “destroying our culture”, plus reservation and unemployment, as his party’s top concerns.
Despite intra-party tensions, the BJP and Congress managed to more or less project a united face. The BJP accommodated many of Raje’s supporters in its second list, while Gehlot blocked the Congress high command’s attempts to change incumbent MLAs.
However, the nervousness regarding a Gujjar backlash, over the sidelining of Sachin Pilot – a fact that the BJP harped on in the final lap – also got Gehlot to make a concession. In 2018, the Gujjar community had rallied behind fellow community member Pilot, electing 8 Gujjar MLAs from the Congress and none from the BJP. In eastern Rajasthan, Pilot’s influence goes well beyond the Gujjar community, and last time, it had also carried several SC/ST candidates of the Congress past the winning mark, despite the Meenas (who are STs) and Gujjars being considered traditional caste rivals.
On the day before the November 25 vote, Gehlot shared a video where Pilot appealed for votes.
Apart from the lure of Gehlot’s welfare schemes, the issues that are set to reflect in the results are the anger over frequent leaks of papers for government recruitment exams, which has fed into unemployment concerns, the Hindutva campaign by the BJP playing on incidents such as Kanhaiyalal killing, and the party’s claims of deteriorating law and order in Rajasthan, especially when it comes to women’s safety.
In a pre-poll interview, Gehlot, whose omnipresence in the Congress campaign was reflected in his appeal that he was the candidate “in every seat”, expressed confidence about achieving the “Mission 156” target.
Gehlot also struck at what some consider the BJP’s Achilles heel in this election: the lack of a CM face. “Central leaders are coming, there is PM Modi, Amit Shah ji, five CMs have come, 5-7 Union ministers. Toh poora dhawa bol rakha hai Rajasthan pe (They have launched a full-scale offensive in Rajasthan),” Gehlot said.
Still, if there was one constant, across India’s largest state geographically, it was Modi’s popularity. Whoever they vote for in the state elections, many said, Narendra Modi was “right for the country”.
