On Haryana home turf, Rao Inderjit still reigns supreme, but as daughter wets her feet, Rewari fortress shows fissures

Rao Inderjit is a descendant of the erstwhile Rewari king Rao Tula Ram, of the Yaduvanshi Ahir clan; his father Rao Birender Singh was the second chief minister of Haryana. Rao Inderjit has himself been in politics since 1977, when he first became an MLA from Rewari’s Jatusana. Over the years, he has contested seven Lok Sabha polls, and won six.

The Rampura House stands a distance from the rest of the village. An expansive yard, a road, a tree line, are additional degrees of separation. A 2-metre-high gate in the rear opens to Rao Inderjit’s party office, with a hay-thatched hut attached to it. It is here that the MP meets the public.

On a bright, sunny early morning, the “hut” is teeming with people as Rao Inderjit walks in slowly with a lumbar belt strapped around his waist and takes a chair. “Our programmes in Rajput villages are spiritless, you need to scale it up,” he tells the assembled gathering.

An elderly man immediately responds: “We are ditching our Rajput ‘samaj’ for you. We voted for Chaudhary Dharambir (in the Lok Sabha polls). We are not with the BJP. We are with you.” The Gurgaon MP is believed to have swayed fellow Yadav community votes in favour of the BJP’s Chaudhary Dharambir, a Jat, to ensure his victory from Bhiwani-Mahendragarh.

But this election, Rao Inderjit has a harder contest on his plate. His daughter, Arti Rao Singh, 45, a national-level shooter, is making her electoral debut from Ateli. Rao Birender represented the seat once, but it is no longer a “safe bet”. Arti is up against former Congress MLA Anita Yadav and 2019 runner-up Thakur Attar Lal of the BSP.

Though Ateli has been electing a BJP MLA since 2014, voters feel the contest will be triangular this time. “There is a Congress wave and, to top it, Arti is just known as Rao Inderjit’s daughter. Yadav votes are also likely to split between her and Anita, while most SC and Rajput votes will go to the BSP,” Praveen Gupta, a businessman, says.

So far, Rao Inderjit and family have had influence over the Ahirwal belt, around 55-60% of whose population is Yadav. Of the region’s 11 Assembly seats – Gurgaon, Badshahpur, Sohna, Bawal, Rewari, Pataudi, Narnaul, Nangal Chaudhary, Mahendergarh, Ateli, and Kosli – eight were won by BJP in 2019.

Rao Inderjit won from Mahendergarh Lok Sabha constituency, under which Ateli falls, in 1998. He lost in 1999, but won again. After delimitation in 2008, he shifted to the Gurgaon Lok Sabha constituency, and has won four times since from there. This time, despite Rao Inderjit helping the BJP win Mahendergarh, there was a substantial decrease in the party’s vote share in several Assembly segments.

A senior BJP leader attributes anti-incumbency and Rao Inderjit’s decision to shift to Gurgaon for this. “We have dropped many sitting MLAs this time,” the leader says.

The family’s hold around the Rampura House, however, shows no sign of weakening – a neighbourhood is named after Rao Tula Ram, a royal bust is prominently displayed on a roundabout near Rewari mandi, a few kilometres away is a statue of Rao Gopal Dev, Tula Ram’s cousin, on a horse, brandishing a sword.

At a laundry store, opposite Rao Tula Ram Vihar, 60-year-old Rekha Yadav emphasises that she votes for Rao Inderjit and not the BJP, “He is our king and Arti behen is our princess,” she says as the store owner Dinesh Kumar chips in, “The family is as important to us today as it was centuries ago.”

The family’s only opponents in the region are scions of two other renowned families – Captain Ajay Yadav of the Congress, whose father had defeated Birender from Rewari in 1952, and Rao Narbir Singh of the BJP from Budhpur. “The BJP has nominated Narbir and Abhay – both from the anti-Inderjit camp – from Badshahpur and Nangal Chaudhary. They could do this only because they are aware of Inderjit’s declining influence,” Ajay Yadav says.

Former MLA and BJP leader Randhir Kapriwas is also a detractor. “The BJP is scared of Rao Inderjit. He managed to get a ticket for his daughter by blackmailing the party. He will leave the party if he gets a chance,” he says.

The rivalry between Inderjit and former CM Manohar Lal Khattar has added to the fissures in the BJP. The Gurgaon MP had publicly expressed his dissatisfaction when Khattar was elevated as Union Cabinet minister. “I was a Union Minister of State in 2004 and am still one but some first-time MPs have been given a Cabinet berth,” he said at a rally.

Meanwhile, a little farther from Rampura House, in the Rajput-dominated village of Kheri, Arti is seeking votes from the people to become their “third leader” from the family. “We need the BJP for development. My father is the leader of ‘chhattis biradari (36 communities)’ and not just one… There is no other family which can boast of a 70-year unblemished political career,” she says.

Listening intently at Arti’s appeal that she is “one of you”, Harish Kumar sighs: “I went to Rampura House once and was not even let inside the gate.”