Jaipur: After BJP’s clean sweeps in the last two Lok Sabha elections and a recent victory in the Assembly elections in Rajasthan’s bipolar politics, voters this time seem to have rejected Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindutva narrative, restricting the Saffron Party to 14 seats out of the total 25.
Congress Party along with its allies garnered 11 seats, springing surprises in some of the seats. The Congress win in 11 seats despite a BJP government in the state, will raise questions on its performance in the last five months.
One of BJP’s union ministers Kailash Choudhary has come way down third in Barmer Lok Sabha constituency. The seat has been won by Congress’s Ummedaram Beniwal with a margin of over 1,17257 votes. He also trounced the popular youth icon Ravindra Singh Bhatti, who was expected to win the seat. BJP’s other ministers Arjun Ram Meghwal has won the Bikaner (SC) seat with a margin of 55711 votes, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat has won Jodhpur with a margin of 114750 votes, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla has won Kota with reduced margin of 41974 votes. However BJP state president, C P Joshi, has won Chittorgarh handsomely with a margin of 389877 votes.
But the biggest upsets for BJP has been Banswara, where Congress’s influential tribal leader Mahendrajeet Singh Malviya, who crossed over to BJP just before the polls, has been given a drubbing by the tribal populace of the region, by ensuring a resounding victory for Bharat Adivasi Party’s (BAP) Rajkumar Roat with a margin of 2,47054 votes. Modi’s now famous mangalsutra rhetoric and calling Muslims “infiltrators” had been made at an election rally in Banswara, where the electorate seemed to have rejected such divisive comments outright. BAP allied with Congress at the last moment.
Another major setback is Dausa seat, where BJP’s Kanhaiya Lal Meena lost to Congress’s Murari Lal Meena with a vote margin of 2,37340 votes. Murari Lal Meena is said to be close to Sachin Pilot and his win may cause upheavals in Congress state leadership. Here Modi had come for a roadshow in support of Kanhaiya Lal. Modi’s support for paralympian Devendra Jhajhariya has also ended in a loss with Rahul Kaswan, who crossed over to Congress after being denied a ticket, winning in Churu with a margin of 72737 votes.
Another ally of Congress, CPI(M)’s Amraram has won from Sikar with a margin of 72896 votes. In Nagaur, where Congress allied with Hanuman Beniwal’s Rashtriya Loktantrik Party, Beniwal has won with a margin of 42225 votes over another Congress turncoat Jyoti Mirdha, who had also lost the Assembly polls in December.
However, Congress has had its share of losses with Ashok Gehlot’s son Vaibhav Gehlot losing the Jalore seat to BJP’s Lumbaram Choudhury with a vote margin of over 201543 votes, despite Gehlot’s extensive electioneering campaign and ensuring the caste equations. Gehlot’s other ticket choices have also seem to have gone wrong.
However, Dushyant Singh, former Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje’s son has won comfortably from Jhalawar-Baran for the fifth consecutive term with a vote margin of 3,70989 votes. With his win and rather muted performance of BJP in the state, there is bound to be talk about the sidelining of Raje in the state.
However, BJP’s two women candidates Jaipur’s Manju Sharma and Rajsamand’s Mahima Kumari Singh from Mewar royal family have won with stupendous margins of 3,31767 votes and 3,92223 votes respectively.
Another woman candidate from Congress, Sanjana Jatav, 25, has won from Bharatpur (SC) seat with a margin of 51,983 votes by defeating Ramswaroop Koli of BJP. She had lost the Kathumar Assembly seat by 409 votes and was given the ticket on the insistence of Priyanka Gandhi.
Poll observers say the voters in Rajasthan have rejected the narrative of Modi’s multiple Ms, beginning with mandir, mangalsutra, Muslim, manifesto and macchli and have clearly discarded the attempt to polarise the voters. But what has worked are the common man’s issues of inflation, unemployment, jobs and safety of women.
Narayan Bareth, political analyst, told Deccan Herald, “There is no wave this time. And people did not buy the Viksit Bharat model. And the Ram Mandir did not find resonance here.The Agniveer issue and the farmers mainly from the Jat community, miffed with the BJP, have voted in favour of Congress. The Agniveer issue has found resonance in Shekhawati region that of Churu, Jhunjhunu, Sikar which send the maximum youth to the defence forces.”
Asfaque Kamkhayani, political analyst from Sikar, says this time the fight has been between the common people and BJP and not between Congress and BJP. The people have outrightly rejected the politics of hate, polarisation. “The youths, who are exposed to social media, have been subjected to the truths and lies and have seen the over-hyped optics. The youth want jobs and restrain on inflation. Moreover the SC/ST community seemed to have shifted away from BJP, as the perception of a brute majority and the fear of changing of the Constitution and waiving off reservations, engulfed them.”