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Across the four states where Assembly election results were announced on Sunday, Rajasthan was the only state where Independents saw some success.
While Independents tend to struggle in state and national elections, and more often than not forfeit their deposits, Rajasthan has regularly elected Independents to its Assembly. This time, eight Independents, including six BJP rebels, have won. In 2018, there were 13 Independent winners. In the past two decades, the highest number of Independent winners was recorded in 2008 at 14.
In contrast, no Independents won in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Telangana this time. While Chhattisgarh has never elected an Independent MLA since the state’s formation in 2000, Madhya Pradesh and Telangana elected four and one Independents, respectively, in the 2018 polls.
Assembly election results 2023: Click here for full list of winners in Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh
The most notable among Rajasthan’s new Independent MLAs are Yunus Khan and Chandrabhan Aakya, both denied tickets by the BJP.
Khan, once considered the second most powerful person in ex-Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje’s government, has represented the Deedwana constituency twice with wins in 2003 and 2013 for the BJP. In 2018, the BJP fielded Khan from Tonk, where he lost to then Rajasthan Congress chief Sachin Pilot by a margin of over 50,000 votes.
This time, after he was denied a BJP ticket, the former MLA launched his campaign as an Independent in Deedwana against the incumbent Congress MLA Chetan Dudi. With the backing of the Muslim community, which supported him when he was a BJP candidate, and outreach to the numerically dominant Jat community, Khan managed to pip Dudi in this election by a relatively narrow margin of just over 2,000 votes.
In Chittorgarh, rebel Aakya entered the fray as an Independent as a result of the BJP’s seat swapping to accommodate Rajsamand MP Diya Kumari, a member of the erstwhile Jaipur royal family. Kumari was nominated from Vidhyadhar Nagar, displacing Narpat Singh Rajvi, a five-time MLA, son-in-law of former vice-president and state CM Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, and a Vasundhara Raje loyalist. To ensure Rajvi wasn’t unhappy, the party moved him to the “safe” Chittorgarh seat, leaving its sitting MLA Chandrabhan Aakya out in the cold.
Though Rajvi had won from Chittorgarh in 1993 and 2003, Aakya had won the seat consecutively in 2013 and 2018. During the campaign as an Independent this time, banking on his popularity in the seat, Aakya painted Rajvi as an “outsider” and claimed the BJP saw him as a “threat”..
“I was denied a ticket because (BJP state unit chief) C P Joshi saw me as a threat to his political future. I am confident of winning as an Independent because people are with me for the work that I have done for them in the past 10 years,” Aakya had told The Indian Express.
Among the other BJP rebels who won are Ritu Banawat in Bayana and Ravindra Singh Bhati in Sheo. Banawat defeated the Congress’s sitting MLA Amar Singh and the BJP candidate Bachchu Singh by a margin of more than 40,000 votes. Bhati, who is just 25, had joined the BJP ahead of polls this year but decided to contest as an Independent after being denied a ticket. Facing the Congress’s sitting MLA Ameen Khan and the BJP’s Swaroop Singh, Bhati managed to record a comprehensive win, with another Independent in Fateh Khan his closest rival.
In Sanchore, another BJP rebel in two-time MLA Jiva Ram Choudhary defeated the Congress’s sitting MLA and the BJP’s Devji Patel, who was among the MPs deployed by the saffron party in the state polls.
In Barmer, Priyanka Chowdhary, who had contested and lost on a BJP ticket from Barmer in 2013, was denied a ticket in 2018 and 2023, reportedly over her ties with former Governor Satya Pal Malik, who had clashed with the BJP over criticism of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This time, Chowdhary contested as an Independent and defeated the Congress’s three-time sitting MLA Mewaram Jain and the BJP’s Deepak Karwasara by more than 13,000 votes.
The other Independent winners include Ganeshraj Bansal in Hanumangarh and Ashok Kumar Kothari Bhilwara.
