The increasing differences between Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje and senior BJP leader Jaswant Singh are becoming too obvious to be missed. The former Union finance and foreign minister is reportedly upset with Raje for ignoring him and his son Manvendra, who is a Member of Parliament from Barmer.While Singh considers himself to be one of the top brass of the BJP and expects Raje to treat him as one, Raje, who holds a special place in the party because of her mother VijayaRaje Scindia, through her actions has denied him the status.Sources say the differences between the two date back to the late 1990s when Singh was the Union Minister for External Affairs and Raje the Minister of State for External Affairs. Singh, after taking over as the External Affairs Minister, had also taken over Raje’s office in South Block, which reportedly laid the foundation for the differences.Though all seemed well during the 2003 Assembly elections with Singh attending Raje’s swearing-in ceremony, the rift between the two has only widened since then. Senior leaders in the BJP say the two have been busy playing their own game for power.“There were several times during the 2004 Lok Sabha elections when Jaswant Singh wanted the party to give tickets to his supporters. It was Raje who came in his way,” says Chandraraj Singhvi, a former BJP leader, who had played an important role in selecting candidates then.Currently the All India Vice-President of the Bharatiya Jan Shakti Party, Singhvi alleges that he was expelled from the party in 2005 after several rebels and Singh launched an agitation against him. “I was a Raje supporter and the rebels, along with Singh, had a problem with that,” he said. Singhvi is the only politician who agreed to speak on the issue.BJP leaders are keeping quiet on the matter. “There are enough controversies, why add to them?” said a Cabinet minister. When probed further, he said, “I don’t know what’s the fight between them but Singh has always supported Raje’s rebels. He believes that he deserves more respect from the Chief Minister and that she should treat him like she treats Vajpayee and Advani.”Publicly the two have always maintained decorum and preferred to be politically correct, but on several instances their differences have made headlines. In May this year, Singh’s wife Sheetal Kanwar filed a complaint in a Jodhpur court against a poster depicting Raje as a goddess. The complaint said that such a depiction hurt Hindu religious sentiments. Following the complaint, the court had ordered the police to file an FIR on this. Singh was also the only one among the senior leaders at the Centre to have demanded Raje’s removal as Chief Minister in June this year, after the Gurjjar agitation.Recently, Singh hosted a lunch for the rebel leaders of the state unit at his ancestral village Jasol in Barmer. Raje and her supporters stayed away. BJP leaders say the message was clear that he supported the anti-Raje movement in the state.The BJP high command has, however, always backed Raje and maintained that the next Assembly elections in December 2008 will be fought under her leadership. “After the clean sweep in the 2003 Assembly elections, she was in no mood to give any undue importance to any other leader. She has proved to be a leader of the masses which Singh is definitely not,” said another minister and a Raje supporter.
