Locals in her constituency say Rajasthan CM Vasundhara Raje was so powerful that no one would put up hoardings next to hers. Manvendra Singh has changed that.
Jhalawar/Jhalrapatan (Rajasthan): The battle of the hoardings in Jhalrapatan constituency in southern Rajasthan seems evenly divided. There’s Vasundhara Raje, chief minister and three-time sitting MLA, smiling with folded hands. Right next to her is Manvendra Singh, her former fellow traveller in the BJP and now opponent from the Congress, looking implacably into the distance.
Therein hangs a tale — really, a feud — between Rajasthan’s foremost families that straddles the decades, in which ego, arrogance, prejudice, pride as well as the urgent need to wield power above all have played their roles in equal measure.
As far as the present is concerned, Singh isn’t winning Jhalrapatan, not by a long shot. Raje has consolidated her hold on this part of Rajasthan’s Harauti region by delivering a number of projects: The recently-paved roads, a mini-secretariat that rivals the one in Jaipur, a medical college-cum-hospital that has been expanded, and several other programmes in insurance, basic wages etc., which have been pursued with both zeal and intensity.
But what Singh, the rank outsider from Barmer who carries the smell of the desert with him, has been able to do in the few weeks since he switched from the BJP to the Congress, is to have dared to fight the most powerful woman in all of Rajasthan.
‘Avenging’ personal blood feud
This is not a David versus Goliath fight whose latest version is playing out in the poppy fields of Jhalrapatan. That’s because Goliath, or Raje, has wrapped up the battle even before it has begun.
The importance of Singh being David is that he is ‘avenging’ not only a personal blood feud that began years ago between his father Jaswant Singh, former union minister for defence, external affairs and finance in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, and Raje, but that the Congress has finally got someone with some recognition to take on the chief minister.
Despite the apparent loss foretold, Singh is unlikely to be afraid to live and tell the tale — a tale of power, of spit and polish and development, and of fear.
The hoardings tell a part of the story. People in the main Jhalawar chowk, over a meal of poha, point out that until now, “the rani was so powerful that her opponents were afraid even to put posters and hoardings next to hers”.
Outside a chemist shop, just off the chowk, a snapshot emerges. As a majority of people wax eloquent about ‘Madam’ — she’s brought the railway line here, a thread factory, a hospital — one man weighs in, begging to differ.
“Come and see the villages. Mine is 65 km from the city. We are in bad shape. So much unemployment, nothing to do,” he says.
Then he scuffs the ground with his foot and spits into it. “They’re all afraid. Nobody wants to speak up and tell the truth,” he adds.
Also read: Congress fields ex-BJP MLA Manvendra Singh against Raje to ‘avenge insult to father’
Supreme confidence
Singh, in an interview with ThePrint, spoke about a farm crisis on hand. “I am shocked to see the state of the villages. Barmer is much better,” he said.
But Dushyant Singh, Raje’s son and MP from Jhalawar-Baran, dismissed the criticism. “Manvendra Singh is an outsider to Jhalrapatan,” he said.
When this reporter pointed out that his mother was also an outsider when she came here in 1989 to fight her first parliamentary election, Dushyant Singh said: “Old Gwalior state borders Jhalawar. My grandmother’s (Vijaya Raje Scindia, former maharani of Gwalior and a founding member of the BJP) influence in this part of Rajasthan remains.”
The fact is, as Raje tightened her hold over Jhalawar, which she won five times from 1989-2003 before moving to Jhalrapatan to contest the assembly elections and become chief minister, she ensured that her Lok Sabha seat would go to her son.
Dushyant Singh and his wife, Niharika, who is of Gujjar ethnicity, have been camping in Jhalawar, managing Raje’s election these last several days. Raje herself has visited her constituency only once.
Her supreme confidence is reflected in the massive campaign she has single-handedly pulled off across the state in recent weeks. Despite a rumoured rift with party president Amit Shah, she has ensured that he and the BJP’s other star campaigner Yogi Adityanath have criss-crossed the state under her charge, and none other than Prime Minister Narendra Modi has pulled out all the stops in Rajasthan these last few days.
Family ties
For Raje, the campaign is not about winning Jhalrapatan — she won by more than 60,000 votes in the last election in 2013 — but about winning the state of Rajasthan.
But the fact remains that despite all the power and glory, the only person who could have exploited her Achilles’ heel is Manvendra Singh. That’s because the two families go back a really long way. So long back, the story goes, that when Raje separated from her husband, the erstwhile Jat ruler of Dholpur, in 1973, Jaswant Singh is supposed to have supported her case.
Later in the Vajpayee government in 1998, she and Jaswant Singh briefly shared the ministry of external affairs. But she was his junior minister and Jaswant Singh ran the show.
Cut to 2007, when as chief minister for the first time, Raje allowed posters of herself to be plastered all over the state posing like the goddess Annapurna. Manvendra Singh’s mother, Sheetal Kanwar, filed a case against her, saying she had hurt her religious sentiments.
In 2014, Raje hit back by allegedly denying Jaswant Singh a ticket when he wanted to fight a parliamentary election for the last time from his native Rajasthan — he then fought as an independent candidate and lost badly. He is now at home in Delhi in a coma.
Also read: Rajasthan polls: How Vasundhara Raje managed to have the final say in ticket allotment
Foregone conclusion
Earlier this week in Jhalrapatan, under a kadam tree just inside the town’s gates, a group of daily labourers who ferry the locally-famous Kota stone, sat whiling away the afternoon.
“Kya haal hain idhar? (What’s the situation here?)” this reporter asked.
“Madam ka hi haal hai (It’s Madam all the way),” one labourer responded.
Another folded his hands in reverence as he called her maharani. A third pointed out that ‘jab se haal sambhala hai’ (since he became conscious of the world), he has only seen her and the work that she has done. “Unhi ko CM banana hai, unhi ko hum vote denge (We will make her chief minister again),” he said.
The consensus under the kadam tree was that ‘Madam’ Vasundhara Raje is winning Jhalrapatan. But it’s not so clear whether she is winning the state as well.
Madam will win the skirmish but lose the war.