'Jadugar' Ashok Gehlot's spell ends as BJP wrests Rajasthan

Animesh Singh

New Delhi, December 3

The 30-year-old revolving door trend remained intact in Rajasthan as the BJP wrested the state, bagging 115 of the 199 seats that went to the polls.

The Congress were reduced to 69 seats with bigwigs, including Assembly Speaker CP Joshi, and ministers Pratap Singh Khachariyawas and Govind Ram Meghwal, facing defeat. Also, the party lost the plot in 15 Gujjar-dominated seats, bagging only five, against BJP’s eight. The community’s anger against CM Ashok Gehlot’s “ill-treatment” of former deputy CM Sachin Pilot seems to have played a role. Both Gehlot and Pilot were among the key winners from the party, apart from state Congress chief Govind Singh Dotasara.

Further, the party managed to win only 19 of the 54 SC/ST-dominated seats, while the BJP bagged 31. The outcome though significant — considering that Rajasthan along with Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh was a virtual semifinal for the Congress before the 2024 Lok Sabha polls — was also ironical, as Gehlot’s welfare measures failed to enthuse voters, even as these clicked for the BJP in Madhya Pradesh. The loss is also a significant phase in Gehlot’s political career, who had steadfastly held on to the CM’s chair throughout his five-year feud with Pilot, something for which he even refused to follow the party high command’s directive to contest the party president’s polls. The veteran Congress leader stares at a political abyss, as by the time the next Assembly elections are held in 2028, he will be 77 years old, and should the party wrest power, going by the revolving door trend, he may not be that strong a contender for the CM’s post.

The wily politician, known by his sobriquet “Jadugar”, had hoped to buck the trend in the state on the basis of his welfare measures, which he had unleashed in the past one year of his tenure.

Apart from offering LPG cylinders at Rs 500, free mobile phones to women, and Chiranjeevi health insurance scheme, the Congress had promised caste survey, interest-free loans of up to Rs 2 lakh to 1 lakh farmers and 10 lakh job opportunities as well as legal guarantee for MSP in its manifesto for Rajasthan.

However, all welfare measures failed to enthuse voters, even as the vote share between the BJP and Congress was slender — a difference of barely 2%.

The only silver lining for the party was that it managed to win several seats in the Jat-dominated belt of Shekhawati, with state Congress president Govind Singh Dotasara winning his Lachhmangarh seat.