Rajasthan polls | ‘Will teach Congress a lesson’: The Sachin Pilot impasse may cost party in Gujjar belt

The BJP has been working on the plan for long. This January, Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed a programme to commemorate the 1,111th ‘Avataran Mahotsav’ of Gujjar deity Devnarayan in Bhilwara.

Former BJP chief minister Vasundhara Raje was not present. It was under her term that over 70 Gujjars were killed during a violent reservation agitation.

“The party has been trying to approach the community with a clean slate, and it will show in the results,” a BJP leader says.

The ‘betrayal’

The BJP’s confidence is reflected on the ground. In Mitrpura in Dausa district – Pilot used to be an MP from this Gujjar-dominated seat, as were his parents Rajesh and Rama – three men of a Gujjar family slam the Congress’s “beizzati (insult)” of Pilot, after the 2018 party win was attributed to a large extent to his efforts as party president.

Sumer Singh Gurjar, 52, says: “We voted for the Congress with tann, mann, dhan (wholeheartedly). Par daga kar diya Pilot ke saath (But they cheated Pilot).”

The support for Pilot had also carried several Scheduled Tribe and Scheduled Caste candidates of the Congress past the winning mark in 2018, despite the Meenas (who are STs) and Gujjars being considered traditional caste rivals.

Sumer says the community continues to back Gajraj Khatana and Murari Lal Meena, but there are doubts over Gujjar support for Congress sitting ministers Parsadi Lal Meena, Mamta Bhupesh (SC) and MLA O P Hudla (ST), among others.

The Gujjar-Meena bonhomie, or what’s left of it, was further strained by Parsadi Lal’s remark recently, saying: “Sachin Pilot, Rajesh Pilot ko humne he panpaya hai (have thrived due to us). No one knew them before 1984. I was the lone Meena leader who was with them and supported whoever the party asked us to – be it Sachin, Rajesh or Rama Pilot.”

In September, Congress MLA from Sawai Madhopur and Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot’s adviser Danish Abrar faced the brunt of the anger over the Pilot issue in his own constituency. Considered a Pilot loyalist, he had sided with Gehlot during Pilot’s 2020 rebellion, when the then deputy CM and 18 other MLAs had parked themselves in hotels in BJP-ruled Haryana, ultimately failing to get enough numbers to break away.

Visiting Sawai Madhopur for a programme to honour Gujjar deity Devnarayan, Abrar had been met with slogans of “Pilot ke gaddaron ko, goli maaro s*****n ko (Shoot those who betrayed Pilot).”

The same month, a vehicle in which Niwai MLA Prashant Bairwa was travelling came under attack. Like Abrar, Bairwa too was considered close to Pilot but did not join him in the rebellion.

In Dausa’s Kherli village, father-son duo Nihal Singh Gurjar and Ajay Singh, 26, say the Congress would have benefited had it implemented a formula of 2.5-years each for Gehlot and Pilot as CM. The high command’s efforts in this regard were constantly thwarted by Gehlot. Last year, Gehlot loyalists even stayed out of a CLP meeting which was understood to have been called by Delhi to pick Pilot as CM.

Nihal says they won’t vote for Bhupesh this time even if Pilot himself canvasses for the minister. The unhappiness with Minister Bhupesh, the MLA from Sikrai, is only partly it; Nihal wants to teach the Congress a “lesson” for Pilot being openly called “naakara nikamma”, as Gehlot has done more than once.

There is another factor behind the winds of change in the Gujjar belt. The son of Gujjar reservation agitation architect Kirori Singh Bainsla, Vijay Bainsla, is a BJP candidate from Deoli Uniara Assembly seat, part of Tonk district adjoining Dausa.

Tonk’s Muslim ‘anger’

In Tonk, Pilot’s own Assembly constituency – where they are the largest group among 2.5 lakh voters – the Muslims are also angry with the Congress government, their despair arising from its “silence” on issues affecting the community. However, they are largely forgiving of Pilot.

This August, during a visit to Tonk, Pilot was accosted by Mohsin Rasheed, the Rajasthan coordinator of the Congress minority cell, who asked why he hadn’t spoken up on the Nasir-Junaid case, referring to the killing of two Muslim youths by “cow vigilantes”.

He also questioned Pilot over the Congress favouring approaching the Supreme Court against the High Court’s acquittal of the Jaipur bomb blast accused, the suggestion being that they were not innocent. Pilot admonished him for “spreading galatfehmi (falsehoods)”.

When the elections came around, Rasheed, 42, who has a significant following on social media, threw his hat into the ring. He later withdrew, on the counsel of “the community’s elders” and after assurances by the Pilot camp, he says.

Rasheed still talks about Pilot’s muted response on issues affecting the community, including a recent statement by BJP Tonk district in-charge and controversial leader Ramesh Bidhuri that “Lahore is watching the Tonk polls”.

However, out in the streets of Tonk, the general – and generous – view is that Pilot can’t afford to take a pro-Muslim stand and turn Hindus away.

“Bidhuri has been sent to provoke tensions and if Pilot speaks, he might lose their (Hindu) votes,” says Anwar, 32, who runs a recycling shop in Tonk’s Kafila market, while adding that vote for Pilot is their “majboori (helplessness)”.

Among a group at a tea-stall nearby, Arif, 45, says Muslims have no option other than the Congress. “Where else will we go?”

After Muslims, the biggest chunk of voters in Tonk are SCs, followed by Gujjars, and then Jats, STs and upper castes. While Pilot’s candidature makes it a safe seat for the Congress now, it has voted almost equally for the party and BJP since the BJP was formed in 1980 – with the BJP winning in 1980, 1990, 1993, 2003 and 2013; and the Congress in 1985, 1998, 2008 and 2018.

Last time, Pilot won by over 54,000 votes against the BJP’s Yunus Khan, an influential leader displaced from his traditional bastion.

While Pilot is expected to win again, if not as comfortably, even staunch Gujjar supporters believe the government may be changing in Jaipur. One of them, Ram Gurjar, says the Congress should make amends and name Pilot as at least the Leader of the Opposition or the party state president, if the BJP wins.

BJP candidate Ajit Singh Mehta, who won from Tonk in 2013, calls Pilot “an outsider”, who has “undone all the work done during my tenure”. “Pilot doesn’t know which village has water or electricity issues, or about the missing compounders and doctors at PHCs and CHCs.”

He talks of pulling off an upset like senior BJP leader Smriti Irani did in Amethi, defeating Rahul Gandhi from the family bastion in 2019. “Today, kings are not born in wombs… it is the people who decide,” Mehta says. “Pilot was the CM face in 2018, but this time the CM (Gehlot) has said the chair won’t leave him. So Pilot is contesting an MLA election, and so am I.”

And then he brings up that ‘R’ word, saying people remember that Pilot is a leader who rebelled against his party.

Back in Kafila, at another tea-stall, Abdul Raees, 63, says: “No party really helps us, but we want the Congress to come to power… We just want to live peacefully, that’s the only issue for us in Tonk.”