Deep Mukherjee 
New Delhi: Nearly two months after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) failed to win a majority in the Lok Sabha on its own, recent organisational appointments made by the saffron party in Rajasthan and Bihar reflect its efforts to control the damage in the two states, where the party’s tally had dipped.
On July 25, BJP president J.P. Nadda appointed Madan Rathore and Dilip Jaiswal as the state party presidents for Rajasthan and Bihar, respectively.
From efforts to woo the OBC population – a section whose shift towards the INDIA Alliance in the recent election has adversely affected BJP’s electoral fortune – in Rajasthan to replacing a Kushwaha leader in Bihar who failed to bring the community to vote for the BJP, the impact of the Lok Sabha election’s outcome on the appointments is apparent.
In both Rajasthan and Bihar, the BJP’s tally of seats had dipped in the 2024 elections as compared to the past two Lok Sabha elections.
While the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance had made a clean sweep in Rajasthan in 2014 and 2019, winning all 25 parliamentary seats, the saffron party could win 14 seats in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, losing 11 seats to the INDIA Alliance.
The party decreased its tally in Rajasthan despite winning the state assembly elections and forming the government in the state in December last year, months before the general elections were held.
In Bihar, the BJP had won 22 seats in 2014 and it had emerged victorious in 17 parliamentary constituencies in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
But this year the BJP could win only 12 seats in Bihar, despite being part of the ruling coalition comprising the Nitish Kumar-led Janata Dal (United). While the JD (U)-BJP combine still managed to win the majority of the 40 seats in Bihar, the BJP’s loss of Lok Sabha seats in the state did show a decrease as compared to the two previous elections.
Effort to salvage shifting OBC vote bank in Rajasthan
Back in December, when two-time former BJP MLA Madan Rathore was denied a ticket from the Sumerpur assembly constituency in Rajasthan’s Pali district, the veteran leader had filed his nominations as an independent candidate.
However, Rathore subsequently withdrew his candidature after claiming that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had instructed him to do so. Later in February this year, Rathore was made a BJP Rajya Sabha MP from Rajasthan.
Rathore, a leader with a background in the RSS who belongs to the OBC Ghanchi caste, has now been given the reins of the state BJP. The choice of Rathore to lead the party in Rajasthan shows the BJP’s attempt to give representation to the OBC community in the state’s top leadership.
Also read: India’s OBCs Can’t Understand Why Narendra Modi, an OBC PM, Is Against a Caste Census
Prior to Rathore’s appointment, Rajasthan had a Brahmin Chief Minister (Bhajan Lal Sharma), a Rajput (also upper caste) deputy chief minister (Diya Kumari), a Dalit deputy chief minister (Prem Chand Bairwa) and a Brahmin state party president (C.P. Joshi).
The absence of OBC leaders from the top posts of the state, despite the community’s significance as a massive vote bank, had hit the BJP hard in the Lok Sabha elections.
The BJP had performed poorly in the Shekhawati region, losing the seats of Sikar, Churu and Jhunjhunu to the opposition in the region, which has a high Jat population. The Jats are the dominant OBC community in Rajasthan comprising more than 10 per cent of the population.
The loss of the Jat support had cost the BJP several constituencies, including seats such as Nagaur and Barmer in the Jat-dominated western Rajasthan.
By appointing Rathore, a non-dominant OBC to the post of the party president, the BJP hopes to give representation of OBCs – something that was missing at the time when the Lok Sabha election was held in the state – in the top rung of the state leadership and also keep its vote bank of smaller OBC communities intact.
Smaller, non-dominant OBC communities that include castes such as Ghanchi, Kumawat, Nagar, Dhakar, Yadav, Patel and Saini are traditionally supporters of the BJP in Rajasthan. Despite being less in number as compared to the Jats, when voting as a bloc, these communities can turn the tide in several assembly and Lok Sabha constituencies in the state. After forming the government in Rajasthan last year, the BJP has made several ministers from smaller OBC castes.
At a time when in regions such as Shekhawati the Jat community is miffed with the BJP over issues such as the farmers’ protest, Agniveer Scheme and the Wrestlers’ protest, by securing the support of other OBC communities, who collectively outnumber the Jats, the BJP hopes to square off the damage from the shifting of the Jat vote.
Newly-crowned party president Rathore has his task cut out, with the upcoming by-elections in five assembly seats in Rajasthan, all of which were earlier held by the INDIA Alliance.
In Bihar, party looks beyond Samrat Choudhary, after Lok Sabha tally dips
In Bihar, the relieving of deputy chief minister Samrat Choudhary from the post of state party president is an equally important development as the appointment of his successor, Dilip Jaiswal.
Dilip Jaiswal. Photo: X/@DilipJaiswalBJP
The fact that the firebrand Choudhary, who since the last few years has been the face of the BJP in Bihar is now replaced with another leader speaks eons about the party leadership’s disappointment from its performance in the state.
As compared to 2019, when its tally was 17, the BJP lost five Lok Sabha seats to the INDIA Alliance in Bihar in 2024 Lok Sabha elections – Arrah, Sasaram, Buxar, Patliputra, Aurangabad – which it had won five years ago. In seats such as Arrah, even smaller parties such as the CPI (ML) Liberation chalked a comeback, serving a blow to the BJP.
Despite the BJP being led by Choudhary – a powerful Kushwaha leader –the saffron party couldn’t emerge victorious in Kushwaha dominated seats such as Arrah, Buxar, Aurangabad and Sasaram in the Lok Sabha elections.
With Choudhary as the party president, the BJP had hoped that his influence would also bring in the votes of the Kushwaha community, a plan that ultimately didn’t work.
While its alliance partner JD (U) managed to latch on to its backward caste vote bank and win 12 seats – same number of Lok Sabha seats it won in 2019 – the performance of the BJP, which has more MLAs in the Bihar assembly than the JD (U) was not according to its expectations.
Despite the BJP having 78 legislators in the Bihar assembly, which is much more than the 44 MLAs of the JD (U), both the parties won an equal number of seats (12 each) in the Lok Sabha elections.
Following its below expectation performance in the Lok Sabha elections, the party has chosen to replace Choudhary, the OBC Kushwaha leader with Jaiswal, who is from an OBC trading community as the state party president. Choudhary remains the deputy chief minister of the state.
With the Bihar assembly elections due next year, the appointment of Jaiswal, who is presently the land and revenue minister in the state government is aimed towards strengthening its organisation in the state.
Known as a leader who has long experience in working in the party organisation, Jaiswal has been entrusted to rejuvenate the party cadre before the next year’s assembly elections and regain the ground lost in the Lok Sabha election.