Deep Mukherjee 
Jaipur: Five months after the INDIA alliance won 11 out of the 25 Lok Sabha seats in Rajasthan – most number of seats won by the alliance in any Hindi heartland state – the upcoming bypolls in seven assembly seats in Rajasthan will be a major test for the Chief Minister Bhajan Lal Sharma-led Bharatiya Janata Party government in the state.
Earlier this week, the Election Commission announced that bypolls in the seven assembly seats – Jhunjhunu, Dausa, Deoli-Uniara, Khinwsar, Salumber, Chorasi and Ramgarh – will be held on November 13.
Of the seven seats, bypolls are being necessitated in five constituencies – Jhunjhunu, Dausa, Deoli-Uniara, Khinwsar and Chorasi – after the sitting MLAs got elected to the Lok Sabha, while two constituencies – Ramgarh and Salumber – got vacated after death of the incumbent legislators.
The by-elections are crucial for the ruling BJP in Rajasthan, which in recent times have been accused by the opposition Congress of being a ‘parchi sarkar (government functioning on slips)’, implying that Sharma’s administration takes all its instructions on governance from New Delhi.
While the BJP had contested the Lok Sabha elections by projecting the face of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the results of the by-elections in November are expected to be the public’s first mandate on the functioning of the BJP government in Rajasthan, which will complete a year in December this year.
On the other hand, the opposition Congress party’s performance in the by-elections will reveal if it has managed to hold on to the gains made during the Lok Sabha elections.
Notably, six out of the seven assembly seats where the bypolls will take place were held by either the Congress or by parties which were part of the alliance against BJP. The BJP held just one seat out of seven.
BJP faces tough challenge in Shekhawati region
One of the main challenges for the BJP will be to wrest the assembly seats in the Jat-dominated Shekhawati region, where it was outperformed by the Congress in the Lok Sabha elections.
In the Shekhawati region, the BJP had faced defeat in the Lok Sabha seats of Sikar, Jhunjhunu and Churu, an area that had witnessed massive protests by the youth after the Agniveer Scheme was announced by the BJP government in the Centre in 2022.
In the December 2023 assembly elections, the Congress, despite losing power in the state, performed well in the Shekhawati belt and got more seats than the BJP in the region.
The Jhunjhunu assembly seat was vacated after Brijendra Singh Ola, the incumbent MLA from the constituency, was elected the MP from Jhunjhunu.
Congress sources said that the party is likely to field someone from Ola’s family for the by-elections from the seat. His wife Rajbala Ola has been a Zila pramukh from Jhunjhunu in the past, while his son and daughter-in-law are also in fray for a ticket in the by-elections.
The BJP has been losing the Jhunjhunu assembly seat since 2008. Some of the names who are in the race for BJP tickets in Jhunjhunu include Bablu Choudhary and Rajendra Singh Bhamboo.
While the Congress appears strong in Jhunjhunu, the dominance of the Ola family – Jhunjhunu MP Brijendra Singh Ola’s father Sis Ram Ola was a former Union Minister – over the district’s politics, has also created dissatisfaction within other local Congress leaders, which can damage the party.
Tribal votes to be deciding factor in eastern Rajasthan
Apart from the Shekhawati region, the Congress had also won big in eastern Rajasthan, bagging the Dausa, Karauli-Dholpur, Tonk-Sawai Madhopur and Bharatpur Lok Sabha seats.
In Dausa, the stronghold of Congress leader and former deputy chief minister Sachin Pilot, veteran legislator Murari Lal Meena – a loyalist of Pilot – was elected as MP in June. For the bypolls, the probable Congress candidates include his wife Savita Meena and daughter Niharika.
The Congress could also field other Pilot loyalists such as former MLA G.R. Khatana, said Congress sources.
The BJP could bank on Shankar Lal Sharma, its former MLA from the seat. Given the high tribal population in Dausa, the saffron party may also field a loyalist of Kirodi Lal Meena, the tallest tribal leader in Rajasthan BJP. Meena was hoping that his brother Jagmohan would get a ticket from Dausa in the Lok Sabha elections but the party opted for another candidate.
Similarly, in Deoli-Uniara, which is an assembly segment part of the Tonk-Sawai Madhopur parliamentary constituency, the BJP is considering the candidature of former MLA Rajendra Gurjar along with Vijay Bainsla, who had contested the 2023 Assembly elections on a BJP ticket from the constituency and lost to Congress’s Harish Chandra Meena, who was later elected as the MP from the seat in June this year.
A seat that has a large Gurjar and Meena population, the electoral contest in Deoli-Uniara is likely to be between candidates of the two communities. One name that the Congress is considering includes that of Namo Narayan Meena, former MP and elder brother of MP Harish Chandra Meena.
Tribal votes are expected to play a decisive factor in the two constituencies.
Congress’s Lok Sabha poll alliances unlikely to sustain in bypolls
While the INDIA Alliance was successful in gaining several seats in Rajasthan, the upcoming by-elections will also test the sustainability of the coalition in the state.
In the Khinwsar and Chorasi seats, the Congress had supported the Rashtriya Loktantrik Party (RLP) and the Bharat Adivasi Party (BAP).
While the Congress didn’t put up a candidate in Nagaur Lok Sabha seat, from where RLP chief Hanuman Beniwal was elected as an MP, the grand old party had supported the BAP in Banswara-Dungarpur parliamentary seat, from where BAP leader Rajkumar Roat was elected MP.
But it doesn’t seem that the alliances will be repeated in assembly bypolls. The BAP on Saturday (October 19) fielded Anil Katara and Jitesh Katara from the Chorasi and Salumber seats, respectively.
Beniwal has already announced that he will field a candidate from his own party in Khinwsar, which further decreases the chance of the Congress’s alliance with these parties holding at the state level.
Salumber was the only seat held by the BJP among the seven assembly constituencies. The saffron party’s MLA Amrit Lal Meena had passed away recently, necessitating the by-election.
The other seat where a bypoll is being held after the death of the incumbent MLA is Ramgarh. After the passing away of incumbent legislator Zubair Khan, the Congress is expected to field someone from his family for the by-election.
“The work that our government has done in the last 10 months has been appreciated by the public. We are going to win all seven seats in the by-elections. Congress is nowhere in the scene and in some seats the party will lose its deposit. We have brought transparency in the public examination system and taken action against incidents of question paper leaks that took place in the Congress regime. Be it providing gas cylinders at Rs. 450 or not levying new taxes on the public, creating 1.11 lakh jobs, our government’s work speaks for itself,” said Rajasthan BJP spokesperson Laxmikant Bhardwaj.
The Congress says that it is confident to hold on to its gains from the Lok Sabha elections and capture the majority of the seats where by-elections will be held.
“The BJP won’t win a single seat in the by-elections. The public will give a befitting reply to the BJP for its dismal performance when it comes to governing the state,” said Congress general secretary and spokesperson Swarnim Chaturvedi.