Rajasthan Assembly Elections 2023: “IT IS shocking and I am surprised. I feel it is a way to defame and hurt the legacy of Bhairon Singh Shekhawatji,” says Narpat Singh Rajvi, the son-in-law of the former Vice-President of India and incumbent BJP MLA, whose name did not figure in the party's first list announced on Monday, including the seat he has won the past three times. Of the 41 seats for which nominations were declared, Rajvi's Vidhyadhar Nagar was the only one that had a sitting BJP MLA. Still, he was dropped, with the BJP giving the ticket from the constituency to Diya Kumari, a sitting MP and a member of the Jaipur royal family. Besides family links to Shekhawat, one of the founders of the BJP who was Rajasthan chief minister thrice, five-time MLA Rajvi is considered close to Vasundhara Raje. The other BJP leader who did not figure in the party's first list from his traditional seat, Rajpal Singh Shekhawat, is likewise a former Bhairon Singh loyalist who is now a Raje confidant. While he lost from Jhotwara in 2018, Rajpal is also a multiple-time legislator (having won four times) and former minister. He was replaced with another MP, Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, whose constituency Jaipur Rural covers Jhotwara Assembly segment. Both Rajvi and Rajpal Singh are among the prominent Rajput faces of the BJP, well-known in Jaipur circles. They have been replaced with fellow Rajputs in seats dominated by the community. The way the two have been sidelined is seen as signifying the passing of an era in the Rajasthan BJP, and a generational change, from under the shadow of Bhairon Singh Shekhawat and Raje. The setback to her confidants is another snub to Raje, who continues to be denied the primacy her supporters think she deserves as the party's most popular Rajasthan leader and former CM. The BJP's power play is quite similar to what it did in the Karnataka Assembly elections earlier this year, when entrenched leaders such as B S Yediyurappa – who date to before the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah era in the party – found themselves in the sidelines. In Rajasthan's case, Raje herself owes a lot to Bhairon Singh, a Jan Sangh veteran who was elected as an MLA in the first Assembly elections of Rajasthan in 1952 and remained an anti-Congress voice throughout. The urbane Raje was brought into the rough and sweat of the Rajasthan state politics by Bhairon Singh. His son-in-law Rajvi has been winning Vidhyadhar Nagar since 2008 – the performance attributed largely to the voters' attachment to Bhairon Singh, whose memorial is a prominent structure in the constituency. Not only is the denial of ticket to Rajvi from the seat a message to supporters of both Bhairon Singh and Raje, but the fact that Diya Kumari has been chosen as his replacement is also significant. As a prominent woman face, also from a royal family, she is considered by many as a counter to Raje. Speaking to The Indian Express, Rajvi said he was shocked at being denied the ticket despite having won from Vidhyadhar Nagar with good margins in 2008, 2013 and 2018. Pointing out that Bhairon Singh was one of the founding members of the BJP, Rajvi added that any effort to hurt his legacy would fail. “Bhairon Singhji’s name is in the hearts of the people.” Rajvi, 72, said he was deciding what to do next. “I will take a call on the next course of action after speaking with my family and party members.” While some BJP sources indicate that Rajvi or another member of the family may be accommodated in subsequent lists and fielded from regions such as Chittorgarh and Bikaner, Rajvi said he himself would not stand from anywhere else but Vidhyadhar Nagar. First elected to the state Assembly in 1993 from Chittorgarh, when Bhairon Singh was the CM, Rajvi has served as minister over several terms, handling portfolios such as Industries and Health. In 1990, Rajvi was credited with having engineered a split in the Janata Dal to save the Bhairon Singh-led BJP government, after ties between the two parties soured over L K Advani's Rath Yatra. Talking about the time as an example of his long contribution to the party, Rajvi says: “The split resulted in the creation of the splinter group Janata Dal (Digvijay), which saved the BJP government. Rajendra Rathore, the present Leader of the Opposition, was among the MLAs who split. and subsequently chalked out his political career in the BJP.” Incidentally, in the first two decades of the 2000s, Rajvi was among senior BJP leaders from the Shekhawat era such as Jaswant Singh who were seen as sidelined under Raje as CM. But in the last five years, Rajvi has been sharing the stage with Raje, indicating a thaw. Rajpal Singh, the other BJP leader whose name did not figure from his traditional Jhotwara seat, has held important portfolios such as Urban Development and Housing in previous Raje governments. In 2018, Rajpal Singh had lost to the Congress’s Lal Chand Katariya.
