For Vasundhara Raje, the signs could not get more ominous. The central leadership of the Bharatiya Janata Party has all but written off the former chief minister of two terms from her claim to a third shot at the helm. If her absence from major party events like the recently-concluded Parivartan Sankalp Yatra and the Jan Aakrosh Yatra in December last year were not enough, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit on Monday proved to be the last nail in the coffin.
“I want to tell every BJP worker that our identity and pride is only the lotus,” the Prime Minister said addressing a rally in Jaipur, Raje by his side. She was not given a chance to address the rally. She found no mention in the PM’s speech either.
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The leadership’s brazen abandoning of Vasundhara, perhaps the BJP’s only mass leader to command support cutting across caste lines — even within the Congress vote base — was only spoken of in hushed tones until now. However, the PM’s visit appears to have given the decision his stamp of approval. The BJP has firmly decided not to project Raje, or any other leader for that matter, as the party’s CM face going into elections.
There are indications that the party may follow a similar strategy in neighbouring Madhya Pradesh where elections are due with Rajasthan in November-December this year and may not name Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the incumbent CM of four terms, as its chief ministerial face. Like Madhya Pradesh, the BJP is likely to field union ministers and Lok Sabha MPs as candidates for the Assembly elections.
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The Raje-led government was voted out of power with the BJP winning only 73 seats in the 2018 polls. The Congress bagged 99 seats in the 200-member Assembly. Its tally rose to 101 after two independents joined the party and Ashok Gehlot was appointed as the chief minister in keeping with the state’s tradition of not voting back the incumbent government to power.
The party’s strategy may have come as a setback for Vasundhara, but it also exposes the chinks in the BJP’s armour. For long, the state unit of the BJP has been ridden with intense factionalism and infighting. With rival camps persistently at loggerheads with each other, the BJP has come across as a divided house – unable to contain the damage being caused amid the leadership vacuum.
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And the feedback from the ground is equally discouraging for the BJP. Internal surveys ahead of the elections, it has been learnt, do not paint a rosy picture for the Opposition party in the desert state that has traditionally seen a two-way contest between the BJP and Congress. The response to the much-touted Parivartan Yatras has been lackluster and the enthusiasm of the party rank and file seemingly low.
The BJP’s strategy may be an effective counter to the infighting and factionalism within, but it also reflects the BJP’s over-dependence on its central leadership. The model that the BJP is looking to deploy in the poll-bound Hindi-heartland states is the same that it used in Karnataka, and failed miserably. The BJP was voted out of power despite a hectic and aggressive campaign by the BJP’s top leadership including PM Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, among several others.
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Opinion polls so far have also delivered varied projections for the upcoming elections. While the ABP News-CVoter opinion poll in August predicted the BJP winning polls with 109-119 seats, a more recent prediction by the IANS-Polstrat survey showed the Congress emerging on top with 97-105 seats.
While opinion polls carry a margin of error and may not always hold true, they do offer an indication that the contest may be too close for comfort to the BJP.
And it is here that Raje’s heft in the state comes into play. With the likelihood of leaders from her camp getting the desired number of tickets extremely low, Raje may choose to field some candidates as Independents.
With a sizable number of seats at her command and in the event of neither party finishing with a clear majority, Raje could emerge as the kingmaker and emerge as the dark horse in a fight to the finish.