Opinion | Gehlot or Pilot? Congress' narrow victory in Rajasthan might influence CM choice

Aditya Menon

The Congress has managed to win the Rajasthan assembly elections by the skin of its teeth, crossing the halfway mark of 100 by a few seats. It wasn't a sweep as many opinion polls had been predicting. However, the win is a significant one. The Congress gained around 80 seats since 2013 and its vote share increased by six percent. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on the other hand, lost 90 seats from last time and its vote share reduced by six percent.

Rebels and smaller parties

To a large extent, the Congress' victory margin was constrained by the presence of rebel candidates and smaller parties, which acted as spoilers. For instance, the party lost the Vidyadhar Nagar seat in Jaipur by over 30,000 votes. Here, Congress rebel Vikram Singh Shekhawat polled over 50,000 votes, fighting as an independent candidate.

In a number of seats, traditionally Congress-leaning communities such as Scheduled Castes (SC), Jats and tribals, chose to vote for smaller parties.

The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) won six seats and got four percent of the vote, eating into the Congress' vote share in a number of seats, especially among Dalits.

The Rashtriya Loktantrik Party (RLP) that was created by Jat leader Hanuman Beniwal a month before the elections, won three seats and got 2.5 percent votes. The absence of a prominent Jat face in the Congress after the death of Balram Jakhar, Ram Niwas Mirdha and Sis Ram Ola created a vacuum which Beniwal tried to step into.

The Congress' ally in Gujarat, the Bharatiya Tribal Party (BTP), also made an impressive debut in Rajasthan, winning two seats and getting 0.8 percent of the votes.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) capitalised on the successful farmers' agitation it led in the state and won two seats in the northern part of Rajasthan: Bhadra in Hanumangarh district and Shree Dungargarh in Bikaner district. However, it failed to win a single seat in Sikar, in the epicentre of the agitation.

BJP fightback

The BJP also seems to have pulled things back in the run-up to the elections.Nowhere has the BJP's fightback been more evident than in the areas where bypolls were held earlier this year: Ajmer, Alwar and Mandalgarh.

In the Ajmer Lok Sabha seat, BJP won five out of eight segments, independents won two, and the Congress, one. In the Alwar Lok Sabha seat, the BJP, Congress and BSP led in two segments each and an independent candidate in one.

In the eighth segment Ramgarh, the elections were postponed due to the death of the BSP candidate. The Congress was leading in all the segments in these two seats in the bypolls in February this year. The BJP has also now won Mandalgarh, which the Congress had won in the by-elections.

Much of the BJP's fightback is said to be the result of smart candidate selection - it dropped 85, or over half of its sitting MLAs in the state, to contain the anti-incumbency against its legislators. Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) buried their differences and the party led a united campaign which peaked in the last two weeks before polling.

What lies ahead

The narrow victory may have a bearing in the Congress' choice of chief minister. Many say that given such a wafer-thin victory, the Congress may opt for a senior leader like former Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot instead of state party chief Sachin Pilot. On the other hand, there are a few in the party who suggest that handing the state to Pilot and projecting Gehlot for a greater role at the national level could be a more effective strategy to ensure that Congress gets the lion's share of seats from Rajasthan in the Lok Sabha elections.

If one aggregates the votes secured by the BJP, Congress, BSP and others in the Assemby segments in each Lok Sabha seat in Rajasthan, the Congress had a decisive lead in 13 out of 25 parliament constituencies.

However except for the BJP sweep in 2013 and 2014, Rajasthan has a history of voting differently in the assembly and national elections, even though they were barely a few months apart. The Congress fell just short of a majority in the 2008 assembly elections but won 21 out of 25 seats in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. The Congress won the state in 1998 but it was the BJP that won an overwhelming majority in the Lok Sabha elections the following year.

Aditya Menon is a Delhi-based political journalist and commentator. Views are personal. 

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