In a setback to the Congress in Rajasthan, its former Lok Sabha MP Dr Jyoti Mirdha on Monday joined the BJP in Delhi in the presence of the party’s state in-charge Arun Singh and state president C P Joshi. With Mirdha in its ranks, the BJP is looking to shore up its prospects in the state’s Nagaur region ahead of the Assembly elections later this year, followed by the Lok Sabha elections next year. कांग्रेस की वरिष्ठ नेता व पूर्व सांसद श्रीमती @jyotimirdha का भाजपा परिवार में हार्दिक स्वागत एवं अभिनन्दन। pic.twitter.com/N9jkvIaDVb — BJP Rajasthan (@BJP4Rajasthan) September 11, 2023 Jyoti belongs to the Jat community and hails from one of the two Mirdha clans in the region that have been politically active since before Independence. Mirdha’s grandfather Nathuram was a member of the first Rajasthan Assembly in 1952. The other influential Mirdha clan is that of Baldev Ram Mirdha, whose son Ramniwas Mirdha was also a member of the first Rajasthan Legislative Assembly in 1952. Ramniwas’s son Harendra Mirdha was also an MLA and a state Cabinet minister. Harendra’s son Raghuvendra Mirdha is also with the Congress. In 2009, Jyoti Mirdha won Nagaur Lok Sabha on a Congress ticket with a 54.64% vote share. Bindu Chaudhary of the BJP came second with 29.21% votes. Five years later, amid a pro-Narendra Modi wave across the country, Jyoti lost to the BJP’s C R Choudhary, polling 33.77% of the votes against Choudhary’s 41.25%. She lost again in 2019, this time to Hanuman Beniwal of the Rashtriya Loktantrik Party (RLP) who contested as a candidate of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA). While Beniwal polled 54.79% of the votes, Jyoti polled 39.74%. Beniwal, also a Jat, distanced himself from the BJP over the three farm laws that led to yearlong protests along Delhi’s borders from 2020 to 2021 and is now seen as closer to the Congress. With Jyoti joining the BJP, the next Lok Sabha polls may again see them contesting against each other but as candidates of each other’s former side. According to political scientist Naresh Dadhich, who is a former head of the Congress party’s Vichar Vibhag in Rajasthan, the Mirdha family (Baldev clan) is perhaps the only family in Rajasthan with continuous affiliation with the Congress since the formation of Rajasthan and even earlier. Nathuram grew politically under the aegis of Baldev, who set up the Marwar Kisan Sabha in the 1940s — Nathuram was the Sabha’s secretary. Nathuram had two sons, Bhanu Prakash Mirdha and Ram Prakash Mirdha. When Nathuram died in 1996 he was Lok Sabha MP from the Congress but the party did not give a ticket to Bhanu Prakash. Instead, the party opted for Ramniwas of the Baldev clan. Bhanu Prakash then contested the bypoll on a BJP ticket and won. Nathuram’s other son Ram Prakash had daughters named Jyoti and Shweta alias Hemsweta. Shweta is married to the Congress’s Rajya Sabha MP Deepender S Hooda, the son of former Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda. Jyoti’s husband is businessman Narendra Gehlaut and his mother-in-law is BJP leader Krishna Gehlawat. At present, the only MLA from the two Mirdha clans is Vijaypal Mirdha, the Congress MLA from Degana in Nagaur. Vijaypal’s father is Richpal Mirdha, who is Nathuram’s nephew. While politically intertwined, the two families haven’t been directly related to each other in 380 years, as per a family member who did not wish to be named. On Jyoti's joining, Congress spokesperson Swarnim Chaturvedi said, “For the last four-and-a-half years, Jyoti Mirdha ji was neither active in the region nor in the party. She also did not attend any party programmes. She spends most of her time outside Rajasthan. She is free to join any party but the locals are all associated and attached to the Congress and her identity was because of the party.”
