New Delhi: Quoting Congress’ presidential candidate nominee Mallikarjun Kharge, Divya Maderna, the party’s MLA from Osian, Rajasthan, last week tweeted: “Bakrid mein bachenge, toh Muharram mein nachenge” (If spared during Bakrid, we will dance for Muharram).
Maderna was responding to a tweet about Mahesh Joshi, Ashok Gehlot government’s chief whip and water resources minister, replying to a show-cause notice he was served by the Congress leadership for alleged indiscipline. Parliamentary Affairs minister Shanti Dhariwal was also served one.
Joshi had allegedly instigated some MLAs into skipping a Congress Legislature Party (CLP) meeting held last month to pass a resolution authorising the party chief, Sonia Gandhi, to appoint a successor to CM Gehlot, who, at the time, was planning to contest the Congress presidential elections.
The MLAs, Gehlot loyalists, who skipped the CLP meeting, met at Dhariwal’s residence instead and submitted resignation letters in protest over the possibility of Sachin Pilot being appointed as the next chief minister.
Maderna has been vocal in her criticism of this boycott. “Now onwards, I will not be taking any directions from him (Joshi). He phoned all legislators to come for the CLP and then, in parallel, led anti-party activity at Dhariwal’s residence,” she reportedly said.
A third-generation politician, Maderna entered active politics in 2010. Both her father and grandfather, tall leaders in the state’s Jat community, served as Congress ministers in the Rajasthan government.
Since the tussle for power in Rajasthan between Gehlot and party leader Sachin Pilot, Maderna has consistently trained her guns on the MLAs close to the CM. And, during the recent political crisis in the state, she was one of the few MLAs who maintained that they’re with the high command no matter what and not a part of either the Gehlot or Pilot group — a trait her grandfather, Parasram Maderna, had also shown over two decades ago when the high command had denied him chief ministership.
38-year-old Maderna was given a ticket for the assembly elections for the first time in 2018 from the Osian seat in Jodhpur. Her win avenged her mother’s loss from the same seat in 2013.
However, in the next election, to be held in 2023, the threat of Jat leader Hanuman Beniwal and his Rashtriya Loktantrik Party (RLP) looms large.
The Congress is in desperate need for an influential Jat face. In that context, Maderna finds a vacuum in the party she could fill, though she possibly has some ways to go before she can swing Jat votes like her grandfather.
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The Jat vote
The Madernas along with the Mirdhas are two families that have historically helped the Congress consolidate their Jat vote in the state. However, since 1999 when the NDA government under Atal Bihari Vajpayee announced reservations for Jats under the OBC category, the community has slowly moved away from the Congress.
The results showed in the 2013 assembly and 2014 Lok Sabha polls where the Congress put up a sub-par performance in the state.
The community also felt betrayed by the Congress for never appointing a Jat CM. The Congress high command’s preference for Ashok Gehlot over Maderna’s grandfather in 1998 was not taken well by the community.
Jats comprise nearly 10 per cent of the state’s 47.6 million electorate and are influential in Shekhawati and Marwar. They compete for political influence with Rajputs and Gujjars, both of whom constitute five to six per cent of the electorate.
In 2018, when Maderna was fielded for the first time, the Congress managed to get some of the community back into its folds.
According to Congress leader and former MLA Karan Singh Uchiyarda, Maderna has a strong “Congresswadi” character.
“Leaders today spend most of their time trying to be in the good books of the leadership and the administration. But I have never heard of Divya Maderna indulging in such behaviour. She has a strong Gandhiwadi and Congresswadi character. She speaks to bureaucrats and other administrators like a MLA should,” he told ThePrint.
Scion of the Jodhpur Madernas
Maderna studied Economics at Pune University before going to the University of Nottingham to pursue her higher studies in the same subject. She ventured into politics soon after she returned, contesting and winning the district council polls in Osian in 2010.
Presently, her mother, Leela Devi is the district head (zila pramukh) of Jodhpur.
Her father, late Mahipal Maderna, was a minister in the Rajasthan government. He was one of the main accused in the Bhanwari Devi murder case, considered one of the lowest points of the previous Gehlot government.
Her grandfather, Parasram, was a tall leader of the Congress, and was one of the key faces for the party’s win in the 1998 assembly elections. However, the Congress high command is said to have favoured Gehlot over Maderna.
Congress MLA Uchiyarda mentions this incident while speaking about Maderna’s leadership style.
“The granddaughter is following in the footsteps of the grandfather. In ’98, when the high command favoured Gehlot, 136 of 152 MLAs of the Congress tried to oppose the decision. But Parasram ji said ‘upar bhagwaan, neeche high command’ [God above, the high command below], and accepted their decision,” Uchiyarda told ThePrint.
Maderna has also reminded Gehlot of her grandfather’s loyalty.
“My grandfather Parasram Maderna, as Pradesh Congress Committee president then, said the party high command’s decision was paramount. These conditional resolutions never happened in Congress in the past,” Maderna had said after the CLP failed to pass a one-line resolution granting authority to the Congress president to choose Gehlot’s successor.
Despite her family’s history with Gehlot, when a factional feud broke out between Pilot and Gehlot over chief-ministership in 2020, Maderna came out in support of Gehlot since he was the high command’s choice.
Candid, direct
In her short term as MLA, Maderna has been at the centre of many controversies.
In 2019, a video of Maderna triggered a row in which she could be seen asking a female sarpanch to sit on the floor instead of the chair next to her. Maderna alleged that the sarpanch was a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) worker and asked how she could be allowed to sit on the dais in a meeting organised to thank villagers who voted for the Congress.
Maderna added that she did not know that the woman was a sarpanch as her face was covered with a veil.
Earlier this year, she had another tiff with Mahesh Joshi when she called him a “rubber stamp” for not addressing the water woes of people in her constituency.
“I am warning you that I have joined politics to serve people and if you continue to bulldoze the water schemes then I will organise a people’s campaign against you,” Maderna had reportedly told Joshi.
She alleged that all work of the department was being done by Gehlot’s principal secretary. In the same breath she also praised former BJP CM from the state, Vasundhara Raje, calling her a “good leader”.
(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)
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