Jaipur: Less than six months after the Congress and the INDIA bloc put up an impressive show in Rajasthan during the Lok Sabha elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) made a comeback, winning five of the seven assembly constituencies in the bypolls, the results of which were declared on Saturday (November 23).
Factors including poor selection of candidates and the inability to extend the alliance stitched during the Lok Sabha elections hit the Congress hard, with the grand old party being unable to even retain the assembly constituencies where it had won during the 2023 assembly elections.
Of the seven assembly seats in Rajasthan where the bypolls were conducted, the Congress held four constituencies – Dausa, Jhunjhunu, Deoli-Uniara and Ramgarh. The BJP held the Salumber seat, while the Rashtriya Loktantrik Party (RLP) and the Bharat Adivasi Party (BAP) held the Khinwsar and Chorasi seats, respectively.
In the election results announced yesterday, the Congress managed to retain only Dausa, while the BJP won in Jhunjhunu, Deoli-Uniara, Ramgarh, Salumber and Khinwsar, wrestling three constituencies from the Congress and one from the RLP.
The BAP managed to retain the Chorasi seat while the party finished second in Salumber, giving a tough fight to the BJP.
The Congress’s dismal performance in the by-elections reflects a change in fortune for the party after the Lok Sabha elections where the INDIA alliance had managed to win 11 Lok Sabha seats in the state, despite being in the opposition.
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Poor candidate selection
Earlier this year, the party had fielded its sitting MLAs Murari Lal Meena (Dausa) Brijendra Singh Ola (Jhunjhunu) and Harish Meena (Deoli-Uniara) for the Lok Sabha elections. All three legislators had won, getting elected as the MPs from Dausa, Jhunjhunu and Tonk-Sawai Madhopur, respectively.
When by-elections were necessitated on these seats, the Congress fielded Deen Dayal Bairwa from Dausa, Kastoor Chand Meena from Deoli-Uniara and MP Brijendra Singh Ola’s son Amit from Jhunjhunu.
While the Congress managed to win Dausa, where Bairwa defeated Jagmohan Meena, the brother of cabinet minister Kirodi Lal Meena, it lost Jhunjhunu and Deoli-Uniara, finishing third in both constituencies.
In Deoli-Uniara, BJP’s Rajendra Gurjar emerged victorious, polling more than 1 lakh votes. His nearest rival was independent candidate Naresh Meena – a Congress rebel – who received more than 59,000 votes. Congress’s Kastoor Chand Meena finished third, polling only 31,000 votes.
The Congress’s defeat in Deoli-Uniara is largely due to poor selection of candidates. The party had won the constituency in the 2018 and 2023 assembly elections, when its candidate Harish Meena – a loyalist of Congress leader Sachin Pilot – had emerged victorious.
After he became the MP from Tonk-Sawai Madhopur earlier this year, the contenders from Congress for the Deoli-Uniara seat included MP Meena’s brother and former Union minister Namo Narain Meena and Congress leader Naresh Meena.
But Congress fielded the relatively less popular Kastoor Chand Meena, who trailed behind Congress rebel Naresh Meena and finished third.
Mandate against political families, INDIA bloc’s failure to sustain alliances
Congress’s Jhunjhunu candidate Amit Ola lost the seat to the BJP’s Rajendra Bhamboo by more than 42,000 votes. Jhunjhunu is considered as the bastion of the Ola family, with Amit’s father Brijendra Singh Ola being the incumbent MP from Jhunjhunu who had earlier won the seats for four consecutive times since 2008. His father, the late Sis Ram Ola, was a former Union minister and a stalwart Jat leader of Rajasthan.
However, the public seems to have rejected the continued dominance of the Ola family from the seat by not supporting the first-timer Amit and voting for Bhamboo, who was unsuccessfully contesting elections from the seat for several years. The BJP has won the Jhunjhunu seat after 21 years.
Another mandate against a political family was witnessed in the Ramgarh assembly constituency, which had fallen vacant after the death of Congress legislator Zubair Khan. The BJP’s Sukhavant Singh emerged victorious in Ramgarh by defeating Aryaan Zubair, the son of ex-MLA Khan. While Khan had been a four-time legislator from Ramgarh, his wife Shafia Zubair had also won from the constituency in 2018.
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One of the main reasons for the INDIA bloc’s success in the Lok Sabha elections was the effectiveness of the Congress’s alliances with smaller parties. As a result, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the RLP had won one parliamentary seat each while the Congress had also supported the BAP.
But in the run-up to the by-elections, the Congress and RLP chose to go solo and fielded different candidates for the bypolls in Khinwsar, the stronghold of RLP supremo Hanuman Beniwal. The seat got vacated after Beniwal was elected the MP from Nagaur as the INDIA alliance’s candidate.
Beniwal fielded his wife Kanika for the Khinwsar by-elections but she lost to the BJP’s Rewant Ram Danga, who won by a margin of more than 13,000 votes. Congress’s Ratan Chaudhary finished third, polling only 5,000 votes.
On the other hand, the BAP continued its impressive performance in southern Rajasthan, retaining the Chorasi seat where its candidate Anil Kumar Katara won by a margin of more than 24,000 votes.
The party lost Salumber by a margin of only 1,285 votes, where Shanta Amrit Lal Meena, the wife of late MLA Amrit Lal Meena of the BJP emerged victorious.
An alliance with Congress in Salumber could have ensured the BAP’s victory.
By-election wins strengthen position of chief minister Bhajan Lal Sharma
The by-election results will bolster the position of chief minister Bhajan Lal Sharma, whose government will complete its first year in December. Ever since first-time MLA Sharma had been made the chief minister, the opposition Congress had been accusing the BJP government in Rajasthan of being a “parchi sarkar”, implying that Sharma has no real power and is dependent on slips with instructions sent by the BJP central leadership for matters of governance.
The Lok Sabha election results too had weakened Sharma’s position as, unlike in 2024 when the opposition won 11 Lok Sabha seats, the BJP had won all 25 parliamentary seats in 2014 and 2019.
The by-election results also signify the diminishing relevance of the BJP’s old guard in the state. While cabinet minister Kirodi Lal Meena is the tallest tribal leader of the saffron party in the state, he couldn’t help his brother Jagmohan win the by-election from Dausa.
After Jagmohan lost the by-election by a margin of 2,300 votes, Meena said in a post on X that he is saddened at the defeat of his brother and alleged that Jagmohan lost because of some “Jaichands (traitors).”
The by-election wins will take the BJP’s tally in the 200-member Rajasthan assembly to 119 MLAs while the Congress will now have 66 legislators, followed by four BAP MLAs, two BSP MLAs, one Rashtriya Lok Dal legislator and eight independents.