BJP's 'golden triangle' strategy for Rajasthan

The Delhi-Agra-Jaipur circuit is often referred to as the "golden triangle" for tourists in India. There is good reason to believe that the BJP is hoping to create a golden triangle of politics involving Delhi, Agra (Uttar Pradesh) and Jaipur (Rajasthan) in these Rajasthan elections. This triangle includes Narendra Modi at the Centre (Delhi), Yogi Adityanath (Uttar Pradesh), and the Rajasthan version of Yogi Adityanath, Mahanth Balaknath, a Lok Sabha MP from Alwar, who is contesting the 2023 elections from Tijara assembly constituency (AC).

- Roshan Kishore

To be sure, the BJP has not announced Balaknath as its chief ministerial face in the state, and it is anything but a forgone conclusion that he will be the chief minister-designate if the party wins a majority when the results are declared on December 3.

To understand what could be a "golden triangle" strategy, however, it is useful to study the subregional analysis of the 2018 assembly elections in Rajasthan. Ashoka University's Trivedi Centre for Political Data (TCPD) divides Rajasthan into seven divisions. They are Ajmer, Bharatpur, Bikaner, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Kota, and Udaipur. A look at the map of Rajasthan shows that almost all districts in Bharatpur and Jaipur divisions border Uttar Pradesh and Haryana. The Congress and the BJP won 99 and 73 ACs, respectively, in Rajasthan in the 2018 elections. But if one takes out the ACs in Bharatpur and Jaipur divisions, the Congress-BJP numbers become 57-62.

The arithmetic is clear. Unless the Congress can repeat its performance in Jaipur and Bharatpur divisions - the eastern part of the state - it will have to do significantly better in the rest of the state to even come close to the majority mark.