THE LAST DRAW
Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje and the BJP have been working to deflect the strong anti-incumbency with a three-pronged approach—divide the Opposition, balance caste equations and project itself as the only party that cares for Hindus
ON OCTOBER 14, when Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje said the state Congress was a divided house where many leaders have declared themselves chief ministers and formed cabinets even before the assembly election, she made her party strategy clear— the BJP will work to highlight how the opposition party has two claimants for the top post, former Union minister Sachin Pilot, who has been the Pradesh Congress Committee president since January 2014, and veteran two-time former chief minister Ashok Gehlot, both from the OBC category. Earlier, BJP president Amit Shah also focused on the same issue, how Congress president Rahul Gandhi was brought in as the face of the party to challenge Raje as the party couldn’t fix on a chief ministerial candidate. Core to this strategy is creating an atmosphere against both Pilot and
Gehlot. Caste plays a major role in this. Raje has been attacking Gehlot relentlessly (his Mali caste has negligible political influence, confined to three of the 200 constituencies) for his “failures” as a chief minister. She’s also working hard to turn Meena voters against Pilot. Pilot is a Gurjar, a caste that matters in half-a-dozen constituencies, but has a traditional rivalry with the Meena who have ST status and can tilt the scales in two dozen constituencies. Now veteran leader Kirori Lal Meena, who has returned to the BJP after a decade, is demanding that Pilot make his stand clear on the demand for ST status to Gurjars, an issue the Meenas strongly resist. There are also efforts to pit Gehlot and Pilot loyalists against each other.
The 2018 assembly election is crucial for Raje’s political future. She is the only satrap among prominent BJP contemporaries who has failed to win successive terms. Losing this election will make her position in the party untenable, especially as Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Shah have issues with her.
SETTING HER HOUSE IN ORDER
Even as it tries to fuel the Gehlot-Pilot rivalry, the BJP faces similar problems at home in getting the anti-Raje factions onboard. Anti-incumbency too has taken a toll, one reason why Raje undertook the Suraj Gaurav Yatra to let people vent their anger and also remind them about the “good work” done by the party. Raje did a public audit
where she would list three dozen initiatives in each assembly segment and challenge the local MLA, collector and people to tell her if the work done was of poor quality. The yatra also saw her return to her usual self, reconnecting with the public. At every stop and rally, she identified local leaders and workers by face and asked about their welfare. Ashok Parnami, former BJP state president, believes the yatra has turned the tide in their favour. “Far from retrieving a lost situation, we are now looking at how to win comfortably,” he says. Not too many leaders believe that, but they do agree it has brought the party back into the reckoning for a close fight.
CANDIDATE SELECTION
The Ranakpur party meeting on October 14 was the first of two crucial three-day raishumari meetings held to get open feedback on probable candidates; the second one was at Jaipur from October 20. For the BJP, selection of candidates is crucial—internal surveys indicate that at least half of the 161 sitting MLAs are unlikely to win as repeat candidates. The main purpose of the two meetings has been to identify three “winnable” candidates from each constituency and work out a strategy to pacify the 60-odd MLAs who will be denied tickets. “I took the secret feedback in sealed boxes. This is the best way to ensure that the best candidate gets the ticket,’’ says Raje. She has involved 30 prominent leaders of all castes and factions to identify the right candidates.
The party will soon launch its biggest pre-poll exercise where workers will go door-to-door to meet 10 million voters to urge them to vote the BJP again. Outside surveys and the party’s own have indicated that nearly 15 per cent voters are fence-sitters who could be persuaded to give the BJP another chance. It could be a game-changer, which is why in Shah’s two dozen meetings in Rajasthan in the past two months, the slogan was ‘vote for the party, not Modi or Raje’. An advantage here is that the party has expanded its rural base by 14 per cent since 2003.
A SENSE OF BETRAYAL
The state unit of the BJP has been upset with Prime Minister Modi for some time for not offering a big project which could be talked up as the Centre’s gift to Rajasthan. Both Modi and Raje were given extraordinary mandates here, but many people now feel let down. It seems all they got in return was the pains post-demonetisation and the cumbersome Goods & Services Tax (GST). A senior BJP leader (who has a background in the RSS) says the party’s core votebank of traders and the middle class expected some dramatic relief from Modi such as abolition of income tax after everyone has been paying GST.
As for countering rising fuel costs, the BJP has been citing how Rajasthan was the first state to cut taxes, followed by the Centre. The party admits there is anger among the committed BJP voters for not implementing its poll promises of removing Section 370 in J&K and building the Ram temple in Ayodhya. RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat has revived the Ram temple issue by demanding that the government use an ordinance to build the temple. The leadership is now trying to convince voters about the other “extraordinary steps” it has taken, like abolishing triple talaq and preventing cow slaughter. The Rajasthan government has even imposed a cess on liquor to fund the rehabilitation of old and abandoned cows and revised school syllabuses to accommodate a Hindu and nationalist agenda. Top leaders in their speeches invariably mention how the Raje government budgets funds every year for development of religious places.
The BJP has realised that as many as 14 per cent voters
can vote for an independent in a close fight, as was the case in 2008. So the party is working on a strategy to let anti-BJP voters vote for a non-Congress option instead. Such a front is coalescing around Hanuman Beniwal, an MLA who was once in the BJP. This may eat into the Congress votebank.
In rural areas, the government’s debt waiver schemes, where loans of less than Rs 50,000 taken by farmers, SC/STs and the underprivileged were written off, should help the party. Besides, on October 6, Raje announced that agricultural power connections will get an annual Rs 10,000 subsidy that will be credited into their account after they pay their bills.
CASTE IS KEY
There is a strong feeling that a section of traditional Rajput voters in the state have drifted away from the BJP. Rajputs can influence voting patterns in 30 seats. The Congress has tried to take advantage of this by bringing Manvendra Singh, a Rajput and son of Jaswant Singh, once a prominent BJP leader, into its fold. The BJP has deputed its Rajput leaders to hit back, claiming it is only the BJP which has always recognised and rewarded Rajput leaders, including Manvendra and Jaswant Singh. The Rajputs are a loyal lot and will find it hard to switch loyalties. The BJP has also consistently honoured their heroes like Maharana Pratap, building memorials and highlighting their lives in textbooks.
The BJP has also tactfully pleased Jat voters (who influence results in 40 seats) by posting 14 superintendents of police from among officers of this community. It’s also hoping that some of its angry Jat voters and grassroots workers will join Beniwal and not the Congress. The Jats are an OBC here, and they detest Gehlot who opposed quotas for them.
UNDERCUTTING RIVALS
The BJP has been carefully picking apart the Congress campaign in the state. So when Rahul Gandhi admitted in Dholpur on October 9 that Congress ministers had let down workers in the past, BJP leaders immediately began quoting it to contrast how the Congress treated its workers while the saffron party rewarded a common worker like Madan Lal Saini by making him state president. The BJP is also hitting hard at Manvendra Singh for saying that the illness of Manohar Parrikar, the Goa Chief Minister and ex-defence minister, was linked to the Rafale deal. The party has been trying to project it as Manvendra and senior Congress leaders making fun of someone suffering from a life-threatening illness.
For all the BJP’s social media chutzpah at the national level, it’s still struggling to make a mark in Rajasthan. There are very few responses that favour Raje on social media in comparison to the support Gehlot and Pilot seem to be garnering. So far, most of the state BJP’s interventions on social media have been confined to the publicity of its schemes. Sources say the party expects to “go aggressive” in November after the candidates’ list comes out.
In a nutshell, the BJP under Raje has been working to deflect the strong anti-incumbency by citing examples of its performance, tackling the caste factor and projecting itself as a party which cares for Hindus.