BJP’s bane, a former ally consolidates Jat votes in Rajasthan

Sardarshahar has more than 50,000 Jat voters and the RLP that has a predominantly Jat support base benefitted from fielding Lal Chand Moond who is from the community. The Congress gave its ticket to Anil Kumar Sharma who is Brahmin. Sharma is the son of MLA Bhanwarlal Sharma whose death necessitated the by-election. The BJP’s candidate Ashok Kumar Pincha is from the trading community.

Though Moond came third, he received 46,753 votes and a significant 22.28 per cent vote share. He upset the electoral arithmetic of the BJP that lost the election by 26, 582 votes. The result illustrated that the RLP received a large chunk of Jat votes. The combined vote share of the BJP and RLP in Sardarshahar is 53.02 per cent, 10 per cent more than the Congress. With the RLP candidate in the fray, the anti-Congress votes were split between the two Opposition parties.

This is not the first time the RLP has dashed the BJP’s hopes. Last year, the Beniwal-led party damaged the Opposition party in the Vallabhnagar Assembly by-election. It fielded BJP rebel Udailal Dangi who secured more than 45,000 votes and finished second. The BJP was pushed to fourth after an Independent candidate came third.

Beniwal won the 2019 Lok Sabha elections from Nagaur as a candidate of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA). His brother Narayan got elected from the Khinwsar Assembly by-election necessitated by Beniwal becoming an MP. But the RLP chief severed ties with the BJP in 2020 in wake of farmers’ protests against three central agriculture laws.

After that, RLP candidate Badri Lal Jat received more than 12,000 votes (8.71 per cent vote share) in the Sahara by-election. Jat came third after the BJP. In Sujangarh, the RLP once again finished third, polling over 32,000 votes, around 11,000 votes less than its former ally.

The Rajsamand by-election, which was won by the BJP, is the only instance where the RLP candidate performed poorly and secured fewer votes than even the None of the Above (NOTA) option.

That the RLP has secured more than 10,000 votes in four of the five by-polls it contested shows that the four-year-old party has managed to carve a niche for itself. Though it may not yet have enough heft to win elections, it can upset the electoral arithmetic of the bigger parties. Since the disintegration of the Janata Dal, most of whose leaders moved to the BJP, political contest in Rajasthan has been more or less a bipolar affair.

What has worked in the RLP’s favour is its presence in the Jat community and Beniwal’s repeated attacks on the Congress and the BJP for allegedly sidelining Jat leaders. Despite being a dominant force in Rajasthan politics, Jats, who comprise more than 10 per cent of the population, have never had a chief minister from their community.

While the once-powerful Jat political families such as the Mirdhas and Madernas have given multiple-time MLAs, MPs and ministers both in the state and the Centre, their influence has waned in the past two decades. Power during this period has been shared every five years by Congress’s Ashok Gehlot and the BJP’s Vasundhara Raje.

Despite the incumbent state presidents of the Congress and BJP being Jats, Beniwal has managed to carve a space among the community for his party and is immensely popular among many Jat youngsters. The MP doesn’t mince words while talking about either Gehlot or Raje, accusing them of being in an “alliance” and sidelining Jat leaders. Of the three RLP MLAs in the 200-member state Assembly, two are from the Scheduled Caste (SC) category, indicating that the party is trying hard to stitch together a support base in the state.

Sardarshahar indicates that the party may a significant role in influencing the results of the next Assembly elections. Beniwal has already said his party will not ally with either the Congress or the BJP and will contest at least 150 seats.