Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh.
Credit: PTI Photo
Jaipur: BJP has named three central observers for Rajasthan which includes Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, who would hold discussions with the party legislators and firm up the name of the chief minister for the desert state.
Rajya Sabha member Saroj Pandya and Vinod Tawde, BJP national general secretary are the other two observers. It is being assumed that the newly elected legislators will meet on Dec 10 in the presence of the observers. The observers may also have a one-on-one with the MLAs to zero down on the choice of their leader.
Intense speculation is rife in Rajasthan over the choice of chief minister as a number of names have cropped up, making the process tricky and difficult.
BJP returned to power in Rajasthan with a comfortable majority of 115 seats as against the ruling Congress’s 69 in a House of 199. Although BJP did gain from the state’s revolving door policy, much of the credit is being given to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who led the campaign in absence of a chief ministerial face. Playing the caste and religious angle to its advantage, BJP questioned Congress’s appeasement politics, its welfare plank, the state’s rising crime rate against women and paper leaks. With a comfortable majority, BJP has been able to increase its vote share, which stood at 41.7 this time.
Apart from Vasundhara Raje, names like Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, Union ministers Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Ashwini Vaishnav, Arjun Ram Meghwal, MLAs Mahant Balaknath, Diya Kumari and others are also being considered.
Former two-time chief minister Raje, who despite being sidelined initially, made up with her extensive campaigning for her loyalists across the state, is one of the strongest contenders for the post.
Apart from winning with a margin of over 53,000 votes, her campaign helped at least 35 others win. A number of MLAs went to greet her and spoke in her favour because of her experience and influence, which probably hasn’t gone down well with the top brasses.
She, along with her son MP Dushyant Singh, met BJP president J P Nadda yesterday in a meeting that lasted for over one and a half hours, but what exactly transpired in the meeting, is not yet known.
In Jaipur, there were allegations about confinement of certain MLAs under the orders of Dushyant Singh, which were refuted promptly.
It is known that Raje has had an uneasy relationship with the BJP top brass since the days when Narendra Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat. Raje’s equation with RSS was also a little strained initially which she tried to mend later on.
Rajnath Singh, the BJP’s central observer, who has also been the party president earlier, had endorsed Raje during the Parivartan Sankalp Yatra in September 2023, and asked the voters to compare the governments of Gehlot and Raje. That gave a message that Raje should be looking at a bigger role in the near future.
Saroj Pandya is a Rajya Sabha member from Chhattisgarh. She has been a mayor, MLA from Vaishali Nagar and also an MP from Durg.
Vinod Tawde, an engineer by profession, is national general secretary of BJP and hails from Maharashtra. He was an MLA from Borivali assembly constituency in 2014 and also has been a minister.