Amid signs of rapprochement with the BJP’s national leadership, former Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje Scindia would be touring four Lok Sabha constituencies in Jharkhand this week to participate in the party’s nationwide outreach to mark the completion of 9 years of Modi government.
The two times CM, Scindia would reach Deoghar on Tuesday and will visit four constituencies Godda, Girdih, Dumka, and Kodarma. All four are currently held by the BJP.
“Our national leaders have been asked to spread out in the country over the next one month as part of the outreach. She (Vasundhara Raje) as the national vice-president was allocated these seats,” a BJP leader from Jharkhand told DH.
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Despite being a national office bearer, Scindia has by and large confined her political activities to Rajasthan. Her loyalists too on many occasions have demanded that she be projected as BJP’s chief ministerial candidate in the 2023 assembly polls.
The other contender for the top post in the state is the union minister for Water Resources, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, who defeated CM Ashok Gehlot’s son from Jodhpur in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
The differences between competing camps in the Rajasthan BJP have often played out in the open. While Raje’s supporters have demanded the next assembly elections be contested under her leadership, just last month, Shekhawat backed Congress leader Sachin Pilot’s demand for investigations into allegations of corruption during Scindia’s tenure.
The developments in Rajasthan follow reports of Pilot breaking away from Congress to launch his own party. BJP is not very keen to convert Rajasthan’s bipolar polity into a triangular contest as this may only lead to division in anti-incumbency votes against the Gehlot government.
After the Karnataka debacle, BJP’s top leadership has sought to settle festering leadership issues and iron out differences in poll-bound states including Rajasthan. Scindia’s meeting with BJP President JP Nadda and the party general secretary in charge of the organization BL Santosh in Delhi last week assumes significance in this regard.
The first signs of détente between warring factions in Rajasthan BJP were visible at Prime Minister Modi’s rally at Ajmer in May last when the former CM Raje was seated next to the PM.
Congress ruled Rajasthan would be going to the polls in December this year. BJP lost the last assembly elections in 2018 but bounced back a few months later to clinch all but one Lok Sabha seat in the state.