New Delhi: With assembly elections next year, the Rajasthan BJP has been rolling out the red carpet for the ghar wapsi, or homecoming, of many leaders who had strayed from its fold. But the trend hasn’t extended to loyalists of former chief minister Vasundhara Raje, who has famously been at loggerheads with state party chief Satish Poonia.
This has particularly come into relief ahead of the crucial bypoll in the Sardarshahar assembly seat on 5 December, necessitated by the death of sitting Congress MLA Bhanwar Lal Sharma in October.
Last week, in the presence of Satish Poonia, BJP state in-charge Arun Singh, and other state leaders, the party welcomed back two Congress crossovers — Rajkumar Rinwa and Jaideep Dudi — from the Bikaner region’s Churu district, where Sardarshahar is located.
They join the likes of other recent returnees, like Laxminarayan Dave and Vijay Bansal, who returned to the BJP in September and August, respectively, as well as former Union minister Natwar Singh’s son Jagat Singh, who rejoined the party last year after unsuccessfully contesting the 2018 elections on a Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) ticket.
However, the BJP’s doors seem to be firmly shut for former minister and seven-time Kolayat MLA Devi Singh Bhati even though he is considered a heavyweight in the Bikaner region. He has been waiting to re-enter the party for a couple of months now, at least.
Bhati quit the BJP ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections when the party gave a ticket to Arjun Ram Meghwal (now a Union minister) and supported Congress’ candidate instead.
According to BJP sources, the biggest obstacle to Bhati’s re-entry is his closeness to Vasundhara Raje, who has been waging a factional battle with Poonia for primacy in the state unit, and also seems to have fallen out of favour with the party’s high command — the latest clue being her absence from the BJP’s high-octane campaign for the Gujarat assembly elections.
While the BJP has tried to circumvent the bitter infighting in the Rajasthan unit by declaring Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the party’s ‘face’ for next year’s state elections, Raje’s supporters have continued to champion her as their leader and next chief minister.
Speaking to ThePrint, Bhati took an apparent dig at Poonia: “The question is not so much about my joining, but about who will lead the BJP in the elections — those who have a mass base, or those who don’t?”
MLA Vasudev Devnani, a member of the committee that is overseeing the re-induction of former leaders into the BJP, told ThePrint that too much should not be read into the pattern of ghar wapsis in Rajasthan.
“Many people want to rejoin the party, but we have not held deliberations on everyone. Some names were cleared after instructions from the party president (Poonia), but many of our leaders are busy with the Gujarat elections. Once the election is over, a holistic view will be taken,” he said.
Also read: ‘Vasundhara phir se’ slogan is back, but ‘everyone’ is a CM wannabe in Rajasthan BJP
Sardarshahar bypoll & Poonia factor
At an event in Churu on 26 November, the BJP re-inducted Rajkumar Rinwa, a former Raje cabinet minister who was expelled in 2018 for rebelling when he was denied an assembly ticket that year; and Jaideep Dudi, who was parliamentary secretary in the incumbent Ashok Gehlot-led Congress government.
Rinwa and Dudi are former MLAs from Churu’s Ratangarh and Bhadra constituencies, respectively.
Soon after their induction, both leaders joined a campaign rally for the Sardarshahar by-election, where the BJP’s Ashok Kumar Pincha, an RSS veteran, is facing off against Congress’s Arun Sharma, the son of the late seven-time MLA Bhanwar Lal Sharma. Pincha, notably, had lost to the late patriarch in the 2018 elections.
Sardarshahar is being seen as a semi-final round before the 2023 Rajasthan assembly elections, but it is also particularly important for another reason.
State BJP president Satish Poonia is from Churu district, where the constituency is located, and if the BJP wins, his graph will rise in the party.
BJP sources said the green signal to bring back the two leaders came from Poonia, who is hoping to capitalise on Rinwa’s Brahmin support base and Dudi’s reputation as a Jat leader.
Out of approximately 2.9 lakh voters in Sardarshahar assembly constituency, there are about 68,000 Jat votes, followed by 52,000 for Scheduled Castes and Tribes, 48,000 for Brahmins, and 30,000 for Rajputs.
Waitlist for Vasundhara supporters
Last month, none other than Vasundhara Raje’s arch rival Ashok Gehlot told mediapersons that he felt the BJP high command was committing an “injustice” by sidelining her.
His comments came soon after Raje had visited Bikaner in October, where ex-BJP leader Devi Lal Bhati had helped mobilise her supporters and also announced that he planned to return to the party.
This unilateral announcement did not go down well with the Poonia camp, party sources said, and was seen as a show of defiance and indiscipline. The BJP high command, including party’s national president J.P. Nadda, were also apprised of the matter.
Then, instead of announcing Bhati’s induction, the party formed a committee under Union minister Arjun Ram Meghwal and former state education minister Vasudev Devnani to decide on the re-entry of leaders ahead of polls. Since then, the committee has been sitting on a decision about Bhati.
A former BJP minister who is close to Raje threw further light on why Bhati has not been inducted despite his influence in Bikaner.
“Bhati had opposed Meghwal’s candidature in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and had left the party on this account. Now Meghwal is the committee chairman who will decide on who gets to return to the party,” the former minister said.
Another complicating factor, he claimed, was that Arjun Meghwal’s son, Ravi Shekhar Meghwal, was hoping to fight the assembly elections from Kolayat constituency, which had once been Bhati’s stronghold.
But above all of this, he added, the Satish Poonia camp was steering clear of Raje supporters. “They would not like to induct any leader who is close to her. That’s why the committee was formed. Why else would a party restrict senior leaders with a clean record from joining?” he asked.
“After discussion with Vasundharaji and our workers, I was preparing to join the BJP, but if they are not inclined, I will take my decision,” Bhati told ThePrint.
Notably, Bhati visited Sardarshahar Monday and was reportedly spotted hobnobbing with workers of the Hanuman Beniwal-led Rashtriya Loktantrik Party (RLP).
Bhati, though, is in good company. Also waiting for a re-induction to the party is Surendra Goyal, BJP sources said. A five-time MLA who was a minister in the Raje cabinet, he left the BJP in 2018 when he did not get a ticket. In 2019, he joined the Congress in the presence of then party president Rahul Gandhi.
Another case pending with the committee, sources said, is that of Subhash Maharia, a former three-time MP from Sikar who was a Union minister in the Vajpayee cabinet.
The factionalism in the party has led to repeated entreaties from the high command to resolve differences, but this has not had much effect.
Evidently frustrated, a Rajasthan BJP leader told ThePrint: “The party is inducting leaders from here and there, and several history-sheeters were also inducted in Bengal. It’s very ironic that at the time of elections, the party is going by the preferences of a few leaders. This factionalism will not create a good atmosphere for us in the upcoming assembly polls.”
(Edited by Asavari Singh)
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