NEW DELHI: Keeping the future of the party in mind, the BJP is determined to form a government in Rajasthan, and given the recent debacle in Karnataka, it is not prepared to take any risk in the desert state.
This is the reason why the party is doing its best to placate former Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, who is miffed by the fact that her role in the forthcoming Assembly elections is yet to be defined.
Raje has made her displeasure know by being conspicuously absent from several state-level programmes and campaigns of the BJP and she has been drawing huge crowds at the events that she is holding.
So, in a bid to appease a powerful leader like her, the party gives Raje a prominent place on the dais whenever it holds meetings, rallies or public events in Delhi or Rajasthan. She even shares the stage with the top leadership of the BJP at major events.
However, the party is not prepared to give Raje any clarity on her role because the BJP wants to replicate the Madhya Pradesh model in Rajasthan by fielding Union Ministers and MPs as candidates in the Assembly elections. According to BJP sources, the party can field nearly half a dozen MPs, including Union Ministers Arjun Ram Meghwal, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, former Union Minister and current Lok Sabha MP Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, Diya Kumari, and Rajya Sabha MP Kirodi Lal Meena, in the Rajasthan Assembly elections.
So, despite continuous demands by Raje to clarify her role in Rajasthan, the party has decided to contest the elections in the state under collective leadership and with Prime Minister Narendra Modi as its face.
The party seems to have its strategy firmly in place, because even before the official announcement of the dates of the Assembly elections, Modi began touring Rajasthan. He was not only wooing the people of the state but was also motivating party cadres and providing guidance to the leaders regarding party unity.
In a meeting of the party's Central Election Committee held at the BJP headquarters on October 1, Modi sought answers from the leaders there regarding the equations and the probability of victory on each seat in the state, along with the names of the candidates. In that meeting, a detailed discussion was held on the names of candidates for approximately 65 seats in Rajasthan.
Banking on the popularity of Modi and the strength of leaders who have an influence in different regions of the state, the BJP is not only focusing on its organisational capacity there but also on preparations at the booth level. In order to keep the organisational preparations for the elections in Rajasthan robust, the BJP has deployed a contingent of 44 leaders to the state from Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Uttarakhand, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat.
The list of leaders includes Union Ministers Jitendra Singh and Krishan Pal Gurjar, Himachal Pradesh's Organisational Secretary Siddharthan, Uttarakhand's General Secretary (Organisation) Ajay Kumar, Delhi General Secretary (Organisation) Pawan Rana, former Chief Minister of Uttarakhand Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, and two former Deputy Chief Ministers of Jammu and Kashmir, Nirmal Singh and Kavinder Gupta, along with Punjab President Sunil Jakhar, Haryana President Om Prakash Dhankar, and MPs Jugal Kishore, Ramesh Bidhuri, Sunita Duggal, Nayab Saini, Vijay Pal Singh Tomar, and Anil Jain, among others.
It now remains to be seen how the BJP’s strategy for Rajasthan pays off in the end.