Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot
Rajasthan Politics: On November 23, Rajasthan will vote in a contest between the incumbent Congress, hoping to buck the trend of incumbents being ousted after implementing a number of welfare programs, and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), hoping to gain power by capitalizing on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity and unifying influence.
In the past 50 years, Rajasthan has seen 11 assembly elections, with the incumbent government only able to prevail twice, in 1985 and 1993, both times with the support of the Congress.
In the past five years, the state has experienced a revolt by 22 MLAs, led by the former deputy chief minister Sachin Pilot, in July 2020 (he and the MLAs ultimately returned to the fold), and a mass resignation drama by Congress MLAs in September 2022 when the party attempted to replace Ashok Gehlot by asking him to run for national party president (he stayed CM and the party’s central leadership seems to have made peace with him). Gehlot and Pilot remained at odds, at least until August, when they reached an agreement.
The BJP has issues as well, as seen by the fact that the state branch of the party has had three presidents in the last five years and that it is unclear who will be in charge of the government should the party win. Several names have been circulating inside the party’s local branch, including Vasundhara Raje, a former two-term chief minister, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Ashwini Vaishnaw, a Union railway minister, and even Om Birla, speaker of the Lok Sabha. The party has only said that it will run “unitedly” under PM Modi’s direction.
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The BJP wants to bring up concerns of law and order, particularly crimes against women, and corruption, particularly the “Red Dairy” scandal brought up by former Gehlot government minister Rajendra Singh Gudha before he was dismissed from the cabinet. Gudha has joined the Shiv Sena group led by Eknath Shinde. The Congress has downplayed the incident, while the BJP has connected the dairy to Gehlot’s wrongdoing and the PM has brought it up at least three times during election rallies in Rajasthan.
The Congress is aiming to benefit from Gehlot’s spate of social programs as well as the announcement at the eleventh hour of a caste survey to garner support from members of the other backward class (OBC).
It’s interesting to note that both the Congress and the BJP want a generational shift. The two parties intend to replace numerous aging leaders with younger ones.
Senior BJP insiders claim that the party plans to nominate several of the state’s union ministers as candidates, just as it did in Madhya Pradesh, where three union ministers — Narendra Singh Tomar, Prahlad Patel, and Faggan Singh Kulaste — have been invited to run.
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