After its virtual decimation in the 2013 Assembly elections, the Congress has bounced back to power in Rajasthan, its tally of 99 seats falling just one short of a simple majority in the 200-seat Assembly. Elections were held to 199 seats, voting in the Ramgarh Assembly segment being deferred following the death of a candidate. The Congress staked a claim to form the government with the help of a seat won by its ally, the Rashtriya Lok Dal, and the support of independent legislators, a good number of whom were Congress rebels.
The BJP’s 2013 tally of 163 seats shrank to 73 this time. Although its vote share was several percentage points lower than what it got last time, it was still a respectable 38.8 per cent. The Congress’ was 39.3 per cent, up from 33 per cent in 2013. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which contested all 200 seats on its own, won six, doubling its 2013 tally, and secured 4 per cent of the vote share.
Among the three Hindi heartland States where Assembly elections were held, it was only in Rajasthan that a change of guard was widely expected, as the State has been throwing out the ruling dispensation in every Assembly election since 1998. Still, unseating the Vasundhara Raje government was a tough challenge for the Congress, which in 2013 recorded its worst ever electoral performance in the State. The BJP wave in 2013, which saw the reinstallation of the party’s governments in neighbouring Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, followed by the Narendra Modi wave in 2014 which resulted in a BJP government at the Centre, raised doubts about the anti-incumbency pattern repeating itself and kindled the BJP’s hopes of retaining power in Rajasthan in this election. The Congress knew it was up against a strong opponent backed by Prime Minister Modi and BJP president Amit Shah. Among the heavyweights who campaigned for the party was Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. Modi held more rallies in Rajasthan than in any of the other four States that went to the polls. Rajasthan, perhaps, needed more attention as it was perceived to be the BJP’s Achilles’ heel. The party’s defeat despite its phalanx of star campaigners is perhaps indicative of a change of perception towards it and its central leadership.
Unlike the BJP, which did not effect a change in the State leadership after it lost to the Congress in 2008, the Congress opted for a drastic change of guard in its State leadership in 2013 and installed the youthful Sachin Pilot as the president of the State unit. Ashok Gehlot, who had twice led the State unit to victory, in 1998 and 2008, was put in charge of party affairs in Gujarat and moved to the Centre. Pilot, a former Member of Parliament and Union Minister who was part of the new team put together by Congress president Rahul Gandhi, was given the dual responsibility of rejuvenating the party and securing decisive electoral victories. Under his leadership, the party in 2017 won byelections to two Lok Sabha constituencies and one Assembly seat, defeating the BJP with convincing margins. If these victories allowed the Congress to hope that it would comfortably touch the 130 mark in 2018, it was not able to capitalise on its gains to quite that extent.
The party was riven with infighting, primarily between the old guard and the new leadership. Not only did the infighting become common knowledge within the party, it was also discussed in the media. The BJP, despite its own share of infighting and rebellions, projected Vasundhara Raje as the undisputed leader. It was her government’s failure to respond effectively to the unemployment crisis, price rise and agrarian distress that led to its defeat. The BJP sensed the resentment in the outcome of the 2017 byelections, which was one reason why the campaign discourse slowly shifted from “ vikaas ” (development) to blatant polarisation. “The BJP would not have got even 73 seats were it not for its tactics of communal polarisation,” said Naresh Dadhich, former Vice Chancellor of Kota University and a member of the Congress think tank in the State.
However, despite the tactic of polarisation, which some feel worked to the BJP’s advantage in the last leg of the campaign, the party was unable to win. Its own policy prescriptions—which ranged from privatisation to contentious labour law reforms, aggressive bovine politics, moves that produced deep insecurity among minorities and disaffection among traders—and unresponsiveness to agrarian distress brought about the defeat. With agrarian distress dominating the political context, the announcement of a blanket loan waiver by the Congress is thought to have swung public opinion against the BJP. Frontline learnt that farmers who had taken big loans running into lakhs silently voted for the Congress in Assembly constituencies in Sikar, which had witnessed strong and successful farmer movements, mainly led by the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS). The Congress won four of the eight seats in Sikar. In Churu, which is considered a stronghold of BJP leader Rajendra Rathore, the BJP won only two out of six seats.
The Congress’ inability to respond adequately to the crisis in the agrarian sector kept it from getting a more decisive victory. It mostly latched on to movements launched by others and lacked both a “farmer front” and a credible farmer leader. A party insider said: “The Congress is like this only. It knows there is resentment against the incumbent government. As there is no alternative, it also knows that people will vote for it. Unlike cadre-based parties that give all they have, the Congress does not want to make that effort even for its own sake.”
In the past five years, the Congress did not come forward to give leadership to farmers when electricity rates were increased or when insurance claims were not settled. It did not press for the declaration of minimum support prices for crops in line with the M.S. Swaminathan Commission’s recommendations. The situation therefore was much the same as during previous tenures of the BJP where the Congress preferred to stay away from contentious issues. Apart from making statements against lynchings, harassment of minorities, and attacks on Dalits, it did little else by way of protest. In fact, when massive protests by Dalits engulfed parts of the State following a Supreme Court order diluting provisions of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Act and there was heavy police repression and retaliation by upper-caste groups, the Congress maintained a studied silence.
The Congress also openly indulged in competitive “religiosity”, with party president Rahul Gandhi visiting mausoleums and temples alike, wary, perhaps, of being labelled “minority friendly” and apprehensive of losing the majority community’s support. Voters, however, appeared relatively unaffected by either the BJP’s communally polarising tactics or the Congress’ “secular religiosity”. Seven of the 14 Muslim candidates fielded by the Congress won. BJP State president Ashok Parnami, a close confidant of Vasundhara Raje, lost to the Congress nominee Rafeeq Khan from Adarsh Nagar constituency in Jaipur by more than 12,000 votes. Yoonus Khan, the BJP’s only minority candidate and outgoing Transport Minister, was defeated by Sachin Pilot from the Tonk Assembly segment.
Among other losers were senior Congress leaders Rameshwar Dudi and Girija Vyas, the BJP rebel Ghanshyam Tiwari, BJP-rebel-turned-Congress candidate Habibur Rehman, newly inducted Congress member and BJP leader Jaswant Singh’s son Manavendra Singh, Agriculture Minister Prabhu Lal Saini and Social Justice Minister Arun Chaturvedi. Thirteen out of 19 Ministers of the outgoing BJP government lost, among them the country’s one and only “Cow Minister”, Otaram Dewasi, who lost to an independent.
The tussle within
A peculiar spectacle that unfolded after the election results was the almost open tussle for the Chief Minister’s post. Sections within the State and central leaderships lobbied hard to get the person of their choice inducted. Those who backed Pilot pointed to his leadership role in the elections. Supporters of Gehlot felt that the party could ill afford to take chances in view of the 2019 Lok Sabha election and needed an experienced person to “take everyone along”. It was forgotten that it was under Gehlot’s watch that the Congress lost all the 25 parliamentary seats in Rajasthan in 2014 to the BJP after a pathetic performance in the 2013 Assembly elections.
A good three days after the declaration of the results, with brainstorming between Jaipur and New Delhi, it was announced that Gehlot would be the Chief Minister and Pilot his deputy. A large section in the Congress believes that Gehlot was always the first choice of the central leadership and that there was no confusion either among the electorate or in the Congress Legislative Party, which had more of Gehlot’s supporters than Pilot’s. But there is also a section that feels that the young people who voted for the party in large numbers and wanted Pilot as the Chief Minister may be disillusioned and move away from the Congress in the 2019 election.
The ‘others’ factor
The contest in 2013 was largely bipolar, between the Congress and the BJP, and few independent candidates made it to the Assembly. This time, 27 candidates from parties other the Congress and the BJP got elected, and the vote share of the “others”, including the BSP, went up to over 18 per cent. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) made a comeback with decisive wins in two seats, defeating BJP and Congress opponents in both. Both candidates, Balwan Poonia and Girdharilal Mahiya, have led farmer movements in Rajasthan. Poonia, who led a successful 58-day protest against the heavy interest rates charged on Kisan Credit Card loans, defeated his nearest BJP rival by over 20,000 votes.
There were some new entrants contesting for the first time: the Bhartiya Tribal Party, which won two seats, and the Rashtriya Lok Tantrik Party (RLTP), led by the BJP rebel Hanuman Beniwal, which won three seats, including Beniwal’s own seat of Khinvsar. The RLTP, which contested 58 seats, had an understanding with the Bharat Vahini Party (BVP), floated by another prominent BJP rebel, former Education Minister Ghanshyam Tiwari, and secured 2.4 per cent of the vote share. However, the BVP, which had announced its formation with much fanfare, could not win a single seat, with Ghanshyam Tiwari himself coming in the third place in his own seat, Sanganer, which ironically went to the BJP candidate, Jaipur Mayor Ashok Lahoti. The RLTP, which was formed a month before the elections, projected itself as representing the farmer community.
It was another matter that Beniwal, who was projected as a representative of farmers, had not shown much interest in the farmer movements led by the Left-leaning AIKS, which drew huge support from the agrarian community. The formation of the RLTP on the eve of the elections was viewed by Congress sceptics as a ploy by the BJP to cash in on the farmer discontent and divide the anti-incumbency votes that the Congress had hoped would come to it by default. The RLTP certainly did scupper the chances of victory for both BJP and Congress nominees as it emerged as the runner-up in at least half a dozen constituencies.
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