Congress, BJP go all out to woo voters in Rajasthan
NORTHERN STATE HAS NOT VOTED ANY PARTY TO POWER FOR CONSECUTIVE TERMS SINCE 1998 ASSEMBLY ELECTIONS
Entering the final phase of the ongoing election season, the main political parties — ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and opposition Congress — are going all out to woo voters in Rajasthan, a battlefield that is wide open and could be anyone’s game. The assembly election in the state is scheduled for December 7.
The BJP has been in power in Rajasthan since 2013, when Vasundhara Raje became the chief minister. Significantly, Rajasthan has not voted a party to power for consecutive terms since 1998 assembly election.
BJP and the Congress have shared power alternatively in the state. However, union minister and senior BJP leader Prakash Javadekar told Gulf News that the election this time would budge the trend of voting out the government.
“This election will prove this trend wrong. The politics has changed quite a lot in the last four years. It was four years ago that BJP secured single-party majority for the first time in 30 years in a general election and Narendra Modi became Prime Minister (PM),” he said.
BJP mocks Congress
In its election rallies, BJP has been mocking Congress president Rahul Gandhi for not declaring the chief ministerial candidate. BJP chief Amit Shah stated that Congress was a party which “does not have a leader, policy or principles.”
Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh also challenged Congress to declare its chief ministerial candidate first.
“BJP is a party of patriots led by Narendra Modi. Congress is ready with the ‘baarat’ (wedding procession), without deciding who will be its ‘dulha’ (groom). Have you ever seen such a marriage,” Singh said in one of the rallies in the state.
Congress president Gandhi, in turn, launched an attack on Modi and said that the PM has broken every promise he made in the last four years. The party has accused the government of indulging in crony capitalism, a charge which has been vehemently denied by the BJP.
“If you are treating the richest people in the country, and you are giving them loan waiver, then you owe that to the farmers of the country. We are not asking for any free gift for farmers; we are just saying that whatever you do, you treat everyone fairly,” Gandhi said.
Last week, Congress released its manifesto for the Rajasthan assembly polls. Party chief Sachin Pilot said that the document was carefully crafted after taking into account around 200,000 suggestions from people through various platforms. Some of the salient features of the manifesto are the loan waivers for farmers, and free education for women and the girlchild.
BJP manifesto for the elections carried promises for Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST). The party announced that the state government will spend about Rs50 billion (Dh2.61 billion) in the next five years for the development of tribal areas and the welfare of SCs.
An interesting factor is that the SC (17.8 per cent) and ST (13.5 per cent) account for Rajasthan’s 31.3 per cent population and are key to who rules the state. BJP won 50 out of the 59 seats reserved for SCs and STs in Rajasthan to return to power in the state in 2013. Congress bagged 34 of the reserved seats in the 200-member assembly and went on to form the government in the state five years earlier.