Elections 2019: Can BJP Overcome 2018 Assembly Poll Loss in Rajasthan?

Rajsamand (Rajasthan): In 2018, Congress won three Assembly elections in the Hindi heartland of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh – all three had incumbent BJP governments. Contrary to expectations of doing phenomenally well and routing its main rival – the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – given the huge anti-incumbency against former Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, the grand old party failed to secure impressive numbers in the desert state. Though Congress managed to form a government, its vote share only marginally increased by 0.5% to settle at 39.3 % and fell one seat short of the majority mark of 100.

If the result of the 2018 Assembly election results in Rajasthan is used as a benchmark for predicting the Lok Sabha election in the state, which is going to polls on April 29 (phase 4) and May 6 (phase 5), Congress should get 12 seats, while 13 seats should go to BJP. This means that BJP would be able to retain control over the state where the electorate had given the party all 25 Lok Sabha seats in 2014.

If what the pollsters say is taken into account, Congress should be winning 16 out of 25 seats. Notably, they say, going by the trends, Rajasthan has not witnessed any radical swing between the Assembly and subsequent Lok Sabha elections since 1998, except in 1999, when Congress retained its vote share of 45%, while the BJP consolidated the vote share of the entire Opposition.

Like Uttar Pradesh, the Rahul Gandhi-led party is going solo in Rajasthan. On the other side, the BJP has taken a smaller party, such as the Rashtriya Loktantrik Party (RLP) along. Founded by influential Jat leader, Hanuman Beniwal, the party won three seats (Bhopalgarh, Merta and Khinvsar) in last year’s Assembly poll. Beniwal was earlier with BJP but was sacked from the party’s membership in 2011 following his conflict with Raje. In 2013, he fought as an Independent candidate for the Assembly and won. Last year, he retained his seat on a RLP ticket.

This time, BJP has given RLP one seat (Nagaur) from where Beniwal will fight the election. The alliance is expected to boost BJP’s prospects in districts such as Ajmer, Jodhpur, Barmer and Pali, where the 47-year-old Jat leader is said to have a strong support base.

But the election this year does not appear to be a cakewalk for BJP in the desert state. The party has already fielded candidates on 24 seats, except Dausa – where two candidates are involved in a tug-of-war. The Congress has fielded Savita Meena from Dausa seat.

Senior BJP leader and Rajya Sabha MP, Kirodi Lal Meena, wants his wife Golma Devi – a former Congress legislator – to be fielded from Dausa, but Om Prakash Hudla, who enjoys strong support from Raje, is also bidding for a ticket. A third claimant – Jaskaur Meena, a former minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government – had also entered the fray ticket-seeking, but she is learnt to have now withdrawn from the race.

Meena and Hudla also met Prakash Javadekar – BJP’s Rajasthan in-charge – but no consensus was reached. Meena, say people close to him, has even gone to the extent of threatening to quit the party if his wife doesn’t get a ticket. He is an influential Meena (a Scheduled tribe community) leader and is said to have a huge following in his community as well as across castes. His anger, therefore, is likely to impact BJP’s prospects.

The tussle between Meena and Hudla is not new. The latter had defeated Meena’s wife on a BJP ticket from Mahua Assembly constituency. Devi at that time was a National People’s Party candidate.

Raje backing Hudla is also an indication that all is not well between BJP’s central and state leadership.