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Journalism of Courage
THE Congress and Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) appear to have set tensions aside for the Bharatpur Assembly seat in Rajasthan, the only seat where RLD is contesting, in alliance with the Congress, in the current Assembly polls.
Sitting RLD MLA Subhash Garg had won it with Congress support in 2018, when the RLD had fielded candidates on two seats and won Bharatpur. Its candidate on the second seat, Malpura, had finished second. Garg is currently Minister of State (Independent charge) for Technical Education, Ayurveda and Indian Medicine.
Garg was originally a Congress worker. After he expressed his desire to contest from Bharatpur to Ashok Gehlot in 2018, the Congress, seeing the influence of Jat voters in the constituency, gave the seat to the RLD — a party favoured by Jats — and had Garg contest as an RLD candidate. He won.
Garg’s campaign slogan at this election is “Congress ka haath, hand pump ke saath (The Congress’s ‘hand’ is with the RLD’s hand pump)”. In return, the Congress expects the RLD to come in handy in other Jat-populated constituencies of the state. There are 53 Assembly seats with significant Jat presence.
The BJP has fielded Vijay Kumar Bansal, who had lost against Garg in 2018 by 15,710 votes. In a relief for Bansal, former BJP district president Giridhari Tiwari, who had turned rebel when denied a ticket and filed his nomination as an Independent, withdrew his papers after the party approached him and convinced him to work in the interest of the party.
“I realised I’m not in a position to win. I’ve withdrawn my nomination, so that my votes are not wasted by strengthening the BJP,” he said. In 2018, Tiwari had contested as a nominee of the Bharat Vahini Party, a registered unrecognised party, coming third with 37,159 votes that was only 1,752 less than the BJP’s runner-up candidate.
The Congress has problems of its own. Former Congress president of Bharatpur district, Girish Kumar, who is the incumbent deputy mayor of Bharatpur municipal corporation, has turned rebel and is contesting on a BSP ticket, after quitting the party last month. As a Jat, he is seen as someone who has the potential to damage the ruling alliance.
For damage control, local RLD leaders are contacting Jats leaders and voters of Mathura and Agra districts of UP, who have family across the border in Bharatpur, to issue appeals to Bharatpur’s electorate through them. Senior RLD leaders of UP will join the campaign in Rajasthan now as well, with Diwali over.
The RSS’s Bharatpur unit recently held a meeting in support of the BJP candidate. Other RSS affiliates like the VHP and Vidya Bharti brought forward the annual functions of all five Vidya Bharti-run Adarsh Vidya Mandir schools in Bharatpur — to address the parents of students and appeal to them directly not to ask who the candidate is, but vote for the BJP, so that a “Ram bhakt sarkar” is formed in “desh heet (national interest)”. Usually, annual functions of these schools are organised in January-February.
“We appealed to them that the state needs a Ram bhakt government that is committed to work in the interest of the nation,” said Naresh Chand Khandelwal, VHP prant seva pramukh (state chief), Rajasthan.
Last Sunday, Khandelwal had visited Ayodhya to collect “akshat (rice offering)” in urns from Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust, for distribution across Rajasthan as invitation to the installation ceremony of the Ram Lalla idol in the sanctum sanctorum of the Ayodhya Ram Mandir on January 22. Khandelwal delivered the urn to the Jaipur office of the VHP, from where it will be distributed across the state in December-January.
