Jaipur: On a frigid December morning in 2023, when a first-time Jaipur legislator, Bhajan Lal Sharma, was foisted on the state as the BJP chief minister, a petite, 26-year-old from his home town in Bharatpur was being consoled by the Congress party workers. Sanjana Jatav was miserably inadequate by just 409 votes. She lost the assembly elections to the BJP candidate from Kathumar assembly constituency by a whisker.
Forget pollsters and their data, BJP's Chief Minister Bhajan Lal Sharma missed the damning red alert that was sirening in his backyard for the past six months leading up to Tuesday’s shocker in Rajasthan. The Congress and INDIA bloc wrested 11 seats from the BJP’s phenomenal 2019 conquest of 24 out of 25 seats. Sanjana is among the winning heroes.
She won by more than 53,000 votes, pretty much avenging her ‘almost’ tag in the assembly elections while breaking former deputy chief minister Sachin Pilot’s record of the youngest MP from Rajasthan.
This eventful turnaround in Sanjana’s story is a telling narration of the ruling party’s embarrassing slide in the state that has everyone in the BJP now scurrying for cover. The results may have come out as a shocker for the party leaders but the signs were screaming aloud to be picked up while Sharma was learning the ropes in the Chief Minister’s office. The three critical factors that worked in Congress's resurgence after the recent Vidhan Sabha defeat are over centralisation of governance in Rajasthan, the Dalit-Muslim combine voting against the party and the Jats landing the decisive punch for a BJP knockout by returning to the Congress fold.
The centralisation of governance in the BJP, even though much celebrated with euphemisms such as ‘double engine sarkaar’, has not necessarily been a boon for the states under its rule. Haryana’s Manohar Lal Khattar was a dud scud and had to be eventually replaced to give a fighting chance to the party electoral campaign in neighbouring state. It didn’t work. The replacement is as ineffective, if not more. Like Khattar, Sharma is now at the centre of the beating BJP has taken in the state.
Evicting Vasundhara Raje from the leadership role was one thing. Scooping up a rank newcomer and presenting him as the icing on the political cake sidelining seasoned politicians was another. Modi’s gambit of placating the Brahmin community in Uttar Pradesh with the grudgingly inexperienced nomination of Sharma in Rajasthan spectacularly backfired. Sharma’s undoing was that he couldn’t get out of Raje’s shadow either.
In 2014, Raje was hounded for backing the induction and candidature of Congress leader Colonel Sonaram from the Jaisalmer-Barmer seat against the wisdom of RSS poster boys such as Gulab Chand Kataria, then home minister. Jaswant Singh, the foreign minister in the Vajyapee cabinet, fought as an independent, imploring the people to vote for prestige in the twilight of his career. Raje got Modi to rally for Sonaram and the rest is history.
Sharma neither betrays the political acumen of Raje or her arch-rival Ashok Gehlot nor carries the urgency of a chief executive of the state. In the Vidhan Sabha, Opposition leaders jokingly warned him of ‘BJP legislators reporting to senior leaders’ in Civil Lines, the VIP area housing incumbent and former chief ministers. On top of that, he has stepped on the toes of senior leaders such as Dr Kirori Lal Meena, who was salivating over a deputy CM’s post but was relegated to the backstreet of politics with agriculture and rural development portfolios.
On polling day, his post on X, “Raghukul riti sada chali aye, pran jaye par vachan na jaye,” (It's a Raghu dynasty tradition; will keep the word even at the cost of our lives), triggered speculations of his possible resignation from the state cabinet. But this is only the tip of the troubles gawking at Sharma. The insult to injury has been a complete rout of the party in his home district and division of Bharatpur. The Congress's red carpet win is primarily founded in its cakewalk in the eastern belt of Rajasthan. This entire segment, including Alwar, Bharatpur, Tonk Sawai Madhopur and Karauli-Dholpur is a Dalit stronghold. BJP’s misreading of the situation in this belt turned out to be catastrophic and an unexpected windfall for Sachin Pilot who commands respect and votes in the region. Add Sri Ganganagar, the district with the highest SC population (34%) to the mix, and you have got a victory trail lighting up the entire eastern flank like an ammo depot on fire.
The Congress played its cards well. With Priyanka Gandhi’s backing, Sanjana Jatav got a second chance even after losing the assembly polls. She belongs to the lowest of the berths in the caste hierarchy and contested the seat as a Scheduled Caste candidate. Bhajan Lal Jatav from the same community also won the Karauli Dholpur seat on the Congress ticket. Kuldeep Indora of Congress won Ganganagar.
With Muslim votes consolidating in Rajasthan even before Modi changed gears after second phase of voting with his polarising speeches, Alwar, another key constituency adjoining Haryana, landed in the Congress kitty. The Dalit-Mulsim combine that has emerged as the kryptonite to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s invincible superhero avatar in the 2024 elections, drove right through his party’s impenetrable armour in the state. The entire eastern flank stands pilfered robbing the BJP of a critical front and handing the Congress a crippling advantage.
If the Dalits got the Congress on top, the Jats put them in the driving seat in Rajasthan. Congress reclaimed almost every seat in the Jat heartland in the state reclaiming Jhunujnu and Churu after 10 years. Their INDIA partners mopped up the remaining seats of Sikar and Nagaur in a clean sweep of the prized Shekhwati area. Ageing warhorse Amra Ram has won the Sikar seat on a CPM ticket. He is the lone ranger from the Left party in the state.
But the most satiating win for the Congress in this region would be offered by their ally and Rashtriya Loktantrik Party (RLP) candidate Hanuman Beniwal. Beniwal defeated BJP’s Jyoti Mirdha by over 42,000 votes. She was among the Congress leftovers, the BJP had ceremoniously picked to decorate its shining platter ahead of the polls. The victory is made sweeter by the second consecutive win for Beniwal, who was the only one to have survived the BJP carpet-bombing in Rajasthan in the 2019 elections. For the uninitiated, Mirdhas are the Gandhis of Rajasthan. The family has been associated with the Congress since its inception and is exceedingly close to the Gandhis. Jyoti Mirdha flipped to the BJP in a last-minute decision that rewarded her with a ticket to oblivion for all practical purposes.
Ummeda Ram Beniwal, the Congress candidate from Barmer-Jaisalmer, the western-most constituency bordering Pakistan, reaffirmed the Jat bloc voting for Congress. This constituency has Mulsims playing a decisive role in making Beniwal victorious against an independent Rajput candidate. BJP was left to lick its wounds in the third position.
Jaipur turned out to be the only consolation for BJP in this debacle. The BJP bastion did not fall despite speculations as both its candidates from Jaipur and Jaipur rural, Manju Sharma and Rao Rajendra Singh, won their seats. Sharmal, daughter of former RSS stalwart and legislator, Bhanwar Lal Sharma, romped home convincingly with a 3 lakh plus victory margin. Singh faced a cliffhanger of a contest winning by barely 1600 votes. Speaker of the Parliament, Om Birla, salvaged his seat defying rumours of his imminent defeat.
The resounding takeaway of the new caste combination in Rajasthan can be summed up in erstwhile Bharatpur Maharaja and former Congress MP from Bharatpur, Vishwendra Singh’s, statement on Sanjana Jatav’s win in Bharatpur. “Aapne vote mein Sanjana Kanyadan kiya hai. Uska aabhaar (Thank you all for giving your votes to Sanjana in Kanyadaan),” Singh said after blessing Jatav upon her win. The Jat king had appealed the voters to give her their mandate in an emotional kanyadaan call, from the seat he once represented.
