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Journalism of Courage
With a little over a year left for the Assembly elections in Rajasthan, the ruling Congress party’s faction affiliated to senior party leader and former deputy chief minister Sachin Pilot has been reaching out to the influential Gujjar community to which Pilot belongs.
While in recent years Pilot has sought to project himself as a leader of “chattis kaum (all communities)” rather than just a Gujjar leader, the pitch being raised by his supporters indicate that their camp is looking to retain the support of the Gujjar community that had voted for the Congress en masse during the 2018 Assembly elections, when Pilot was leading the party’s campaign as the Rajasthan Pradesh Congress Committee (RPCC) president.
Last week, addressing a gathering of the Gujjar community, a Pilot loyalist leader Ved Prakash Solanki not only asserted that he was not with any party but with Sachin Pilot, but also pointed out how the community had voted for the Congress when Pilot was leading its state unit.
“Has there been another such jati (community) in Rajasthan that completely decimated the BJP? Not even one MLA (of the BJP in Gujjar-dominated seats) won! I want to thank the (Gujjar) BJP workers who totally closed their eyes. They may have voted for themselves but all their family members voted for the hand symbol (Congress),” Solanki, the Congress MLA from Chaksu, told the rally to thunderous applause.
Solanki was referring to the point that while several Gujjar candidates had won on the BJP ticket in the 2013 state Assembly elections, not a single Gujjar nominee of the saffron party could win in the 2018 polls despite the BJP’s 73-seat haul out of the total 200 seats. Currently, all Gujjar legislators are from the Congress party.
Days after Solanki’s speech, another Pilot supporter Indraj Gurjar, the Viratnagar MLA, highlighted the contributions of Pilot and his father, late Rajesh Pilot, for Gujjars at a community event. “If somebody put our community on the map, it was late Rajesh Pilot. Our young leader Sachin Pilot is following in his father’s footsteps. I remember even before the elections we had come here with Sachin Pilot sahab. Pilot sahab had said that if the community stands with him, he alone will play kabaddi. He brought the Congress government in Rajasthan on his own might,” said Gurjar, addressing a Gujjar gathering at Jodhpuria Dham in Tonk district’s Newai.
“After Lord Devnarayan, who is our deity, if this community worships anyone, that person is Rajesh Pilot sahab. Your blessings are with us. In less than one-and-half years, elections will come then we will talk to these people, who have betrayed the community,” said Gurjar, who was flanked by another Gujjar MLA GR Khatana.
Dev Dham in Jodhpuriya is a temple of the deity Lord Devnarayan revered by the Gujjar community.
Solanki, Gurjar and Khatana were among the 18 loyalist MLAs of Pilot, who had sided with him during the latter’s failed rebellion against Chief Minister and party veteran Ashok Gehlot in 2020.
His camp’s bid to mobilise the Gujjar support base has come as Pilot, who has turned 45 Wednesday, positions himself for becoming the party’s face for the 2023 polls. Interestingly, even the Gehlot camp has also tried in recent months to make overtures to the Gujjar community, that was said to have rallied round the Congress in the 2018 polls in the hope that Pilot will take over as the CM in the event of the party’s victory. The grand old party had swept the Gujjar-dominated eastern Rajasthan while the then incumbent BJP was routed there.
There are two Gujjar ministers, Shakuntala Rawat and Ashok Chandna, in the Congress-led Rajasthan government, both of whom are known Gehlot loyalists.
“The Gujjar population in Rajasthan is around 7-8 per cent (of the state’s population) and the community plays a decisive role in around 50 Assembly and 7 Lok Sabha constituencies,” says the BJP’s Shailendra Singh Dhabhai, who was among the Gujjar leaders who led the community’s agitation for reservation in Rajasthan several years ago.
