No Desert Storm So Far

All’s not well with the ruling BJP, but rival Congress is yet to show it has the chutzpah to win Rajasthan

- Salik Ahmad

WITH Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah visiting Rajasthan within a span of two weeks, the state is heating up to the assembly polls due in December. Over the past 25 years, the state government has been run in turns by the BJP and the Congress with an almost religious regularity. As the BJP’s Vasundhararaje completes her second term as CM, the anti-incumbency odds may well favour the Congress. Modi and Shah have probably sensed this, and hence the urgency to make a head start.

Like in 2013, elections will be held in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chh­attisgarh together. That time, when the BJP managed a clear majority in all three states and it was projected as the first solid testimony to the might of the “Modi wave”, the most impressive win was in Rajasthan, where the party bagged 163 seats, up from 78 in 2008. Losing this major state in the Hindi belt a few months before the 2019 general elections would, therefore, be a big setback for the saffron party.

The BJP’s traditional votebank here includes the Rajputs, who are pretty miffed this time. “Why did the BJP not appoint Gajendra Singh Shekhawat as the state party chief?” asks Giriraj Singh Lotwara, who heads the Shri Rajput Sabha (SRS) and has famously called the BJP a “Bohut Jhoothi Party (very untrustworthy party)”. “Vasundhara was elevated by Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, a Rajput, but she opposed Gajendra Singh’s elevation on caste grounds. The party also treated senior leader Jaswant Singh with disrespect and denied him a ticket in the 2014 general elections.”