Journalism of Courage
IN AN unexpected move eight months before Rajasthan goes to polls, the BJP Thursday replaced its state president Satish Poonia with its Lok Sabha MP from Chittorgarh, Chandra Prakash Joshi.
A Brahmin leader, Joshi’s politics, interestingly, began with National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) when he first became the vice president and then the president of his college’s student union in Chittorgarh between 1994 and 1996. Subsequently, he joined the ABVP and rose through the ranks, moving on to zila parishad membership and up-pradhan post in Bhadesar panchayat samiti, and to several posts in the Rajasthan Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) Rajasthan before becoming its president.
In 2014, in the Narendra Modi wave that swept the country, Joshi was elected to the Lok Sabha from Chittorgarh, winning the seat by a massive 3.16 lakh votes. In 2019, he won again, increasing his margin to 5.76 lakh votes, over Congress rival Gopal Singh Shekhawat. This was the second-highest victory margin in the state in that election, next only to the BJP’s Subhash Chandra Baheria win from Bhilwara by 6.12 lakh votes.
Joshi has been the BJP state vice-president since August 2020.
In an election year, the BJP might be seeking to cash in on Joshi’s value as a Brahmin leader. Rajasthan has had four Brahmin CMs – the most from a community – though the last one was over three decades ago.
Poonia, the outgoing BJP state president, is a Jat. While the community outnumbers Brahmins substantially, it has never had a CM in Rajasthan.
Currently, there is a void in the Rajasthan BJP when it comes to Brahmin representation. The Rajasthan BJP last had a tall Brahmin leader in Ghanshyam Tiwari, an erudite six-term MLA who left and floated his own party after his differences with then BJP CM Vasundhara Raje. After Tiwari’s party failed to make a mark in the 2018 Assembly elections, he joined the Congress. While he eventually returned to the BJP, and the party made him a Rajya Sabha member last year, Tiwari is seen as past his prime and turned 75 in December last year.
Joshi at 47 is much younger, including to Poonia, who is 58.
A Brahmin Mahapanchayat held over the weekend seemed to celebrate Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw as the new face of the community for the BJP. However, Joshi holds several advantages over Vaishnaw, including the fact that he is an organisation man as compared to the Union minister, who has been a bureaucrat most of his career.
One of the speakers at the Mahapanchayat was Joshi. Proudly wearing his caste on his sleeve, he told the gathering: “The nation and the world agrees that if anyone runs the world, it is the gods. And it is the mantras that run the gods. And who recites those mantras? It is the Brahmin community. Hence the respect commanded by this community is not without reason.”
Extolling Brahmins further, he said that revolutionaries belonging to the community were at the forefront of the Indian Independence struggle.
On the occasion, Joshi had three messages for the community, some of which might now come to fruit as he becomes the state president: “Brahmins should stop pulling legs and stop speaking evil against one another. Second, if an adharmi (unrighteous/godless) commits an atrocity with a daughter of a Hindu, then the sons of Lord Parshuram should stand up. Third, if a daughter of our community’s poor is deprived of kanyadaan or education, then our people should hold her hands and help her move forward.”
Before the Mahapanchayat, the last time Joshi was in the news was in November 2022, for slapping a government employee who had allegedly asked a person for a bribe.
Although it is still early to read into Joshi’s appointment, after Gulab Chand Kataria, first-time MLA Poonia – who held the post of state president since September 2019 – has become the second person with estranged ties to former chief minister Vasundhara Raje to be removed from direct organisational affairs of the party’s state unit. Last month, Kataria, the Leader of Opposition in the Assembly, was moved out as Assam Governor.
The BJP national general secretary and the party’s Rajasthan in-charge, Arun Singh, however, said Poonia was very much part of the state plan. His “effective leadership will continue to play an important role in the future as well”, he said.
Apart from caste, Joshi fits the bill for the BJP region-wise too. Like Kataria, he belongs to Rajasthan’s Mewar region, and his increased stature is expected to fill up the void left by Kataria.
