Denied a ticket by BJP, Vasundhara Raje’s former No. 2 fights back in no man’s land

Yunus Khan enters the village amid much fanfare even as people line up to greet him while a few others dance beside the tractor, which has been modified into Khan’s election vehicle. A flag bearing Khan’s election symbol – an almirah – is hoisted over it.

Chants of “Yunus Khan zindabad” and “Hamara neta kaisa ho, Yunus Khan jaisa ho (How should our leader be, he should be like Yunus Khan)” reverberate as a smiling Khan— a two-time former MLA from Deedwana and once considered the second most powerful person in ex-Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje’s government — greets the crowd and makes his way into the village, where the crowd rises to greet him. Khan proceeds to garland the photograph of Ambedkar before taking a seat.

The crowd, comprising people from neighbouring villages too, is asked to address the gathering.

First to speak is Prabhuram from the Bairwa community, who has come to Daulatpura from neighbouring Bagatpura village. “A meeting was convened by the Bairwa samaj at Bagatpura, where a decision to vote for Khan-ji was taken. He is our vikas purush,” he says as the crowd breaks into applause.

“I was an MLA from this constituency for 10 years. The people gathered here are those who stood by me in my joy and grief. The list of atrocities committed against your communities over the past five years is long. The Palot case, especially, has shamed us all,” Khan starts his address.

Khan’s anti-Congress election pitch resembles that of the BJP, but the upcoming election is different for Khan, who is contesting as an Independent after being denied a ticket by the BJP.

Deedwana has an electorate of 2.66 lakh, of which Meghwals, Bairwas and other Scheduled Castes (SCs) make up 35,000 votes.

The Palot case dates back to February 2022, when a 35-year-old Dalit woman was allegedly raped and tortured. The woman was found six days later, with insect bites on her body, and later succumbed to her injuries.

Following her death, the woman’s family and the Opposition BJP accused a local Congress worker and a member of the Deedwana Panchayat Samiti of the crime and alleged that the administration was shielding him. Both the Congress worker and the incumbent Congress MLA, Chetan Dudi, hail from the numerically dominant Jat community, which has around 60,000 votes in the constituency.

Training guns on Dudi, Khan says the role played by the legislator in the Palot case was despicable. “You are an elected representative and took the side of injustice. There can be no bigger sin than this,” he says.

Khan had defeated Dudi’s father Rupa Ram in the 2003 Assembly elections while in 2013, he defeated Dudi. In 1998 and 2008, Rupa Ram had successfully contested the Deedwana elections against Khan. In 2018, the BJP fielded Khan from the Tonk seat, where he lost the polls to then Rajasthan Congress chief Sachin Pilot by a margin of over 50,000 votes.

Following the denial of a ticket by the BJP, the former Deedwana MLA, who was introduced to politics by former Rajasthan CM and Vice-President Bhairaon Singh Shekhawat, finds himself in a tricky situation.

As the former MLA looks to plant his feet again in his bastion, the 59-year-old has thus far refrained from launching scathing attacks on his former party and has targeted Dudi more frequently during his campaign. Khan’s 25-year-long political career, during which he has served as minister of transport and Public Works Development (PWD), has been entirely built on an anti-Congress narrative.

The tribute to Ambedkar shows his strategy is to to restructure the social voting pattern in Deedwana and bring together the Muslim and Dalit votes to counter Dudi’s Jat vote bank.

In his bid to get cross-community support, Khan has also been visiting temples, including those of folk deities of the Jat community, and meeting people across community lines.

Muslims in Deedwana have voted for the BJP, contrary to their traditional pattern of voting for the Congress, when Khan was the BJP candidate. His supporters, this time round, are hoping that sympathy for Khan might cause them to rally behind him.

The former MLA’s Kayamkhani Muslim community is 50,000-strong in Deedwana. The community also has a significant population in other parts of the state, especially Nagaur and some districts of the Shekhawati region.

As his campaign enters Beri Choti, a Kayamkhani Muslim majority village, Khan speaks of the community’s valour and its contribution to the Army. “This is a village where Bharat’s sanskar and sanskriti flourish. The programme here did not start with the ayat of the Quran but with a tribute to Veer Tejaji. Hum Bharat mein rehte hai (We live in Bharat),” Khan said, drawing applause from the crowd. Veer Tejaji is a local folk deity.

Here, in a rare display of discontent for his former party, Khan opens up on being denied a BJP ticket. “Aaj aap musalman ka naam le kar ke jo mere saath vyavhaar kar rahe ho, ye theek nahin hai (Today how you are treating me for being a Muslim, it is not right.) I have never allowed my caste, religion and my family to interfere. I always regarded the BJP as my family and stood by it whenever required. I have always thought of Deedwana to be my family,” Khan, flanked by supporters of different communities, says.

A visibly emotional Khan then proceeds to tell the crowd about the sacrifices he has made for the BJP. “Which leader would give up a safe seat like Deedwana and contest from far away Tonk against Sachin Pilot. I, as a dedicated party worker of the BJP, did it to ensure no one could point a finger at me,” he says as the crowd chants his name and moves forward to greet him.

Dudi, for his part, claims that Khan’s only goal is to cut anti-BJP votes by contesting as a rebel. “The BJP has denied him a ticket but he targets the Congress everywhere. It seems like he is working for the BJP. Why should we worry? Technically, he should cut into the BJP’s votes as he is a BJP rebel. But he has been fielded by the BJP so that he cuts into the votes of Congress. People have understood the BJP’s strategy of cutting votes by fielding him. Our fight is with the BJP. Khan stands nowhere,” the MLA says.

The BJP has fielded Khan’s protege Jitendra Singh Jodha, a Rajput. He was also the party’s candidate from Deedwana in 2018, when he lost to Dudi by around 40,000 votes.

“When he was in the BJP, he was our leader and our workers with him. Now, he is not in the party, but we will win in Deedwana. Our fight is against the Congress,” Jodha says.

Oscillating between his anti-Congress rhetoric and asking the public to vote for him and not for the BJP, Khan finds himself in a no man’s land.

His dilemma is aptly showcased in a video that has been doing the rounds on social media. “On the morning of (November) 25, after praying to your ishtadev (deity) and kamal (lotus)… ,” he is seen saying in the video before abruptly stopping and realising that the BJP’s election symbol – lotus – is no longer his.