BJP only party in Rajasthan to clean sweep LS polls 2nd time in a row

By Archana Sharma

Jaipur, May 25 (IANS) The historical victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party has broken many record in Rajasthan politics apart from creating the new one as the party has emerged as the only one in state to make a clean sweep for a second time in a row in the last 67 years.

In 2014, the BJP had won all 25 seats in Rajasthan by riding the 'Modi wave' and this time again it has saffronised the state with all seats in its bag.

With it, the saffron party has also ended the trend that used to see the ruling governments getting the edge in Parliamentary elections. The six-month-in power ruling Congress has bitten the dust.

"The stunning victory margins in the state narrates the story of huge anti-incumbency against the Congress which came up only 150 days back. It managed to form a government only by making false promises to the people," BJP MLA Satish Poonia said.

"They promised farm loan waivers and unemployment allowance to youths. However, both have remained unfulfilled till date," he added.

Also, it was for the first time that 21 out of 25 MPs, have won by a margin of over two lakh votes. In fact, on three seats, the margin has been around five lakh votes.

In Bhilwara, Subhash Bahariya won by record margin of 6.12 lakh votes while Rajsamand candidate Diya Kumari won by over 5.51 lakh votes. Former Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje's son Dushyant Singh, who was fielded from Jhalawar-Baran, won by a margin of 4.53 lakh votes.

Ramcharam Bohra, who has retained the Jaipur seat, said: "The Congress has been exposed in just six months."

The most surprising element of this election is the defeat of Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot's son Vaibhav Gehlot, who was contesting from Jodhpur seat and was making his debut into politics.

Despite Ashok Gehlot's efforts to ensure Vaibhav's victory, he was defeated badly by sitting MP and Union Minister of State Gajendra Singh Shekhawat with a margin of 2,74,440 votes. It was a shocking moment as Ashok Gahlot has represented the seat for around 40 years in Parliament.

Another significant result which shocked people was Barmer. Here the BJP had fielded a farmer leader Kailash Chowdhary against the influential Congress leader Manvendra Singh, who is the son of BJP veteran Jaswant Singh. But Manvendra lost by over 3.23 lakh votes.

Speaking on this, state BJP chief Madanlal Saini said: "We ensured our booth gets strong. Amit Shah had given a slogan, 'Booth Jeeta to Election Jeeta', and we just followed his instructions.

The other impressive victories in state was of Union Minister for State and sitting MP of Jaipur Rural Rajyawardhan Singh Rathore who won by a record margin 3.93 lakh votes defeating his rival Krishna Poonia who is a Congress MLA from Jaipur Rural Assembly constituency.

Similarly, Jats and Gujjars brought perks for the BJP. In Nagaur, the BJP formed an alliance with Rashtriya Loktantrik Party (RLP) and fielded Hanuman Beniwal, who helped the party to polarise Jat votes and won the election with a margin of over 1.81 lakh votes defeating Congress' influential candidate Jyoti Mirdha.

This community card brought the Jat voters in favour of the BJP in Barmer and Jodhpur also.

Induction of Gujjar leader Kirori Singh Bainsla into the party was a huge support for the BJP. The party has been lacking a strong Gujjar leader in eastern belt of Rajasthan earlier and this lacunae was plugged in with this social engineering.

Rajasthan's Jat population counts to around 12 per cent of the state's population, while Gujjars are around 9 per cent, which makes the number around 84 lakh and 63 lakh, respectively.

In the Assembly elections, state Congress chief and Deputy Chief Minister Sachin Pilot, who is a Gujjar, swung the community's votes to the Congress.

Last but not the least was the ground work of booth workers and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh team which read the voters' pulse and brought them out of their houses to vote in large numbers.

In the first phase of polling held on April 29 for 13 seats, 68.22 per cent voting was recorded while in the second phase on May 6, 63.78 per cent voting was registered on 12 seats.

Overall, 66.12 per cent voting was recorded which was the highest voter turnout in the last 67 years.

In 2014, 63.10 per cent voting was recorded.

The RSS camp was quite active in western Rajasthan where over 70 per cent polling was witnessed in some belts. Even the people in these areas supported the RSS for their social work over the last many years and came out in large numbers to vote.

Senior Congress leader Suresh Chaudhary, however, said: "Party had expected to win a decent number of seats...We will analyse the reasons for this defeat.