A slippery ally: The non-committal politics of Hanuman Beniwal

In its three-and-half-year-long existence, the RLP has allied with the BJP, later broken away from the NDA and now, once again, will cast its lot with Chandra, the Independent candidate who is supported by the BJP.

“The three MLAs of the RLP will not vote for the candidate of the BJP and the Congress in the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections, and after respecting the dignity of democracy, will vote in favour of independent candidate Subhash Chandra,” Beniwal, 50, an MP from Nagaur, tweeted on Monday.

Despite Beniwal’s assertion that he is against both the Congress and the BJP, this announcement of the RLP chief brought smiles to the BJP camp, because the party is going all out to garner the votes required for Chandra to sail through to Rajya Sabha.

Ever since the party’s inception in October 2018, the RLP has made several flip flops, always choosing the option that would help it establish itself in Rajasthan as a key force.

Beniwal, a former student union president of Rajasthan University, had won the 2008 Assembly elections from Khinvsar Assembly constituency in Nagaur district on a BJP ticket but his ties with the party soon soured due to his strained relationship with former CM Raje. In 2013, he contested the state elections from Khinvsar as an Independent candidate after leaving the BJP and won.

Between 2013 and 2018, Beniwal, who had by then consolidated his position as a Jat leader popular among the youth, turned into one of the most vociferous critics of the then Raje-led government.

At a massive rally in Jaipur, after launching the RLP in October 2018, Beniwal claimed his party would emerge as a third force in Rajasthan, becoming an alternative to the Congress and BJP. The party had won three seats in the 2018 Assembly elections, a decent performance for a first-time party in a state where the politics revolves around the Congress and the BJP.

The first sign of the party shifting its position came right after the 2018 elections, when Beniwal stated that he is ready to support the Congress in the Assembly, provided Sachin Pilot becomes Chief Minister. However, with Gehlot getting ahead in the CM race and going on to helm the top post, the possibility of a Cong-RLP alliance ended as abruptly as it began.

Just four months later, Beniwal allied with the BJP before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and won the parliamentary elections from Nagaur as a candidate of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA). At the time, Beniwal had, while citing the Pulwama attack, said that he allied with the BJP in the interest of nationalism.

The alliance between the RLP and the BJP continued for the 2019 by-election for Khinvsar seat, which was vacated after Beniwal became MP. The election was won by Beniwal’s brother Narayan.

In 2020, the RLP, which describes itself as a party for jawans and kisans (army personnel and farmers), was initially silent over the three farm laws brought by the Centre. But as the clamour for repeal of the three laws increased, leading to massive farmer protests, Beniwal started criticising the BJP towards the end of 2020. Finally, in December 2020, Beniwal split from the NDA over the farm laws and organised protests in several areas of Rajasthan.

Shortly after Beniwal’s declaration of support for Chandra in the Rajya Sabha elections, Congress MLA Divya Maderna, who comes from a family of powerful Jat politicians including Paras Ram Maderna and Mahipal Maderna, launched a scathing attack on Beniwal.

In the past, Maderna and Beniwal have clashed several times, taking potshots at each other. While Jat politics in Rajasthan has revolved around political families such as the Mirdhas and Madernas, in recent years, Beniwal has been trying to establish himself in this space.

In the Nagaur Lok Sabha elections, Beniwal defeated Congress’s Jat leader Jyoti Mirdha. The Nagaur seat has been traditionally seen as the centre of Jat politics in Rajasthan. The main support base of the RLP remain Jats, who nurse a grudge that despite being numerically strong and politically powerful, no leader from the community could ever become the Chief Minister of Rajasthan.

In the past, Beniwal has openly accused CM Gehlot of sidelining Jat leaders and ex-CM Raje of tricking Jats into voting for her by calling herself the daughter-in-law of Jats — Raje is married to the erstwhile royal family of Dholpur, which was ruled by Jats — but not doing enough for the community.