Friendless and cornered, but Raje pushes back: ‘Vasundhara phir se’

Over the next six months, BJP national general secretary Arun Singh, who is in charge of Rajasthan, will visit all 33 districts in the state to boost the morale of the workers. Later this week, between September 2 and 4, Singh will visit Jhunjhunu, Sikar and Jaipur to oversee the party’s booth-level preparedness for the elections. Singh will then make a brief visit to Karnataka, after which he will be back in Rajasthan on September 9-10, in time for the national executive meet of the party’s OBC Morcha that will also be attended by Home Minister Amit Shah and party chief J P Nadda.

But Raje, who had forced the central leadership – with which she hasn’t been on the best of terms and which is apparently not in favour of her style of functioning – to name her as CM candidate ahead of the 2018 assembly elections, is not one to sit quietly and toe the line drawn by the national leadership, said party sources. Last week, posters with slogans “Kaho dil se, Vasundhara phir se (say it from your heart, once more Vasundhara)” had come up in parts of Rajasthan.

“Raje is a fighter… she will not give up. It does not matter who supports her,” said a party leader who is familiar with developments in Rajasthan.

Party insiders say the leadership of the BJP has “too many apprehensions” about the way Raje functions in the state and has “taken into consideration complaints of the state leadership against her”.

Both central and state leaders have been at pains to emphasise that the BJP will fight the 2023 assembly elections under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Rajasthan BJP chief Satish Poonia’s recent suggestion – that the upper age-limit for BJP leaders to hold positions in the government and party should be 70 instead of the unofficial limit of 75 years – was seen as being aimed at Raje. While Poonia is 57 years old, Raje is 69 and will turn 70 in March 2023.

Raje’s rivals in the state unit argue that it was voters’ disenchantment towards Raje that cost the BJP the last assembly election. They recalled the widespread slogans of “Modi tujhse bair nahi, Vasundhara teri khair nahi (Nothing against Modi, won’t spare Vasundhara)” in the run-up to the 2018 assembly polls.

In May this year, Poonia went to the extent of making a public announcement that the party would not project a face in the elections. “Sometimes faces are projected, sometimes they are not. The BJP will fight the upcoming elections under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The 2017 election in Uttar Pradesh was not contested under Yogi Adityanath, yet we won,” Poonia said during a strategy meeting of the BJP in Jaipur.

Despite the state unit’s snub, Nadda has ensured that Raje is given high regard during the public events that he has attended in the state. On her part, Raje, too, has adopted a visibly changed approach — she has been trying to shed her moderate image to adopt a pro-Hindutva image while taking on the Ashok Gehlot government.

Party insiders recalled that Raje’s efforts to please the Hindu hardliners were in line with what she had done ahead of the 2018 elections, too. “Raje is not a hardliner or a Hindutva face. But some leaders close to her feel that her political stance emphasising on development may not be enough for her to muster the required support to pitch herself at a time when she does not have many supporters in the national BJP. All those who are likely to support her – be it Rajnath Singh or Nitin Gadkari – are not strong enough to stand up for her. So she needs to mobilise her support from the ground,” said a BJP leader from Rajasthan.

Even ahead of the 2018 elections, which she faced as the incumbent chief minister, Raje had to fiercely fight to have her way in the party. After Raje loyalist Ashok Parnami resigned as state unit chief, the central leadership was keen on naming Union minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat as the new president, but Raje argued that appointing a Rajput (Shekhawat) would alienate the party’s Jat voters, who are traditionally seen as rival communities.

With no agreement between the central leadership and Raje on the choice of state unit chief, the Rajasthan BJP had remained headless for long. Finally, a truce was called on the eve of the elections and the central leadership agreed to make Madan Lal Saini, a name approved by Raje, as the new BJP president.

From being the powerhouse of the BJP in Rajasthan, Raje, a two-term chief minister and a multi-term MP, had been kept away from playing any significant role in the party since its loss in the 2018 elections.

However, with the elections round the corner, Raje feels her support base cutting across social divides– she calls her herself the daughter-in-law of Jats, daughter of Rajputs and samdhan of Gujjars (her daughter-in-law is from a Gujjar family) – and the backing she has from the trader community and the MLAs in her camp would be enough to get the party leadership to view her favourably.

But as a BJP leader said, times have changed, and with it, the circumstances in the party. But Raje seems determined to fight on.