Why a Jat-Dalit combination could impact Rajasthan results

The RLP has come to be pigeonholed as a Jat party, and the association with the ASP may burnish its acceptability among other castes, especially the Dalits. The RLP can already claim some hold among the SCs, with two of its three sitting MLAs being Dalit.

For a brief while, around the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the RLP had aligned with the BJP. Beniwal had contested and won as an MP thanks to the party’s support, but distanced himself from the BJP later over the farm laws.

At the joint press conference he addressed with Azad, where he announced the tie-up, Beniwal said there was need for a strong alternative to the BJP and Congress, and for “kisan, jawan and Dalits to come together” in the state.

While Jats are estimated at about 10% of Rajasthan’s population, SCs are close to 18%. As per the Rajasthan Jat Mahasabha, the community dominates at least 40 seats and influences several others.

In the 2018 Assembly elections, around 76 lakh votes of the total 3.56 crore cast (or 21.34%) were neither for the ruling Congress nor the BJP, and it is this number that the RLP and ASP say they are primarily targeting.

Of the 3.56 crore votes, the Congress and its allies Loktantrik Janata Dal, Rashtriya Lok Dal and NCP took in over 1.40 crore. The BJP got 1.38 crore. The RLP, which contested on 58 seats, polled 8.5 lakh votes in all.

The ASP, which will be contesting its first election in Rajasthan, is expected to have limited impact on the seats it will contest.

But while the RLP-ASP ambitions may be overblown, a Jat-Dalit combination could hurt the two main parties, and more the BJP than the Congress.

Beniwal, who announced 10 candidates on Saturday, has announced plans to contest all 200 seats, and said they are open to welcoming more non-BJP, non-Congress parties in a possible third front.

In 2018, the RLP had tied up with Ghanshyam Tiwari’s Bharat Vahini Party, which lost all the 63 seats it contested, losing its deposit in 62.

There is growing restlessness in the Jat community, which has been demanding its own CM. Until a few months ago, both Congress and BJP state presidents were Jats, before the BJP replaced Satish Poonia with C P Joshi.

There are around 30-odd Jat MLAs in the outgoing Assembly. And Jat Mahasabha president Rajaram Meel says they are demanding that the two parties field at least 40 Jats.

As for the 34 reserved seats for SCs in the state, apart from the two with the RLP, 19 are with the Congress, 12 with the BJP, and one with Independent Babulal Nagar currently. The Congress has fielded Nagar from Dudu this time.

In the bypolls held over the past three-four years, the RLP is believed to have eaten into the BJP votes. In the 2022 Sardarshahar bypoll, for example, the Congress gained, with the Jat votes seen to have got divided between the BJP and RLP. The Congress won by more than 26,000 votes; the RLP got 46,628.

In the 2021 Vallabhnagar bypoll, the Congress won and the BJP finished fourth in a race where the RLP fielded a BJP rebel, Udailal Dangi.

In the Sujangarh bypoll, the Congress’s Manoj Kumar won by a margin of over 35,600 votes against the BJP’s Khemaram; the RLP’s Sitaram Nayak got 32,210 votes.

In some other bypolls since 2018 too, RLP candidates have received substantial votes.

In the coming Assembly elections, should contests go down to the wire, the RLP may end up being the difference between the winner and the loser.

As for Azad, he will be banking on cornering the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) vote in Rajasthan. The BSP won six seats in 2018 but all its MLAs later merged with the Congress.

In May last year, Azad had said: “BSP supporters have been betrayed. In the past, they have expressed their angst and confronted the party’s state leadership. The ASP will contest the next Assembly elections in Rajasthan and we feel that people will recognise us as an alternative.”

Of the 10 candidates announced by the RLP, Beniwal, who is currently the Lok Sabha MP from Nagaur, will himself contest from Khinvsar in place of his brother Narayan Beniwal, the sitting MLA; MLA Indira Devi has been retained from Merta; and party state president Pukhraj Garg from Bhopalgarh.