Vasundhara Raje scripts a BJP win in Rajasthan elections
Led by Vasundhara Raje, the BJP is set to return to power in Rajasthan after years out of power in the desert state
New Delhi: Led by Vasundhara Raje, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is set to return to power in Rajasthan after years out of power in the desert state after her party won a record 160 seats in the 200-member state assembly.
The 60-year-old Raje is making a comeback in Rajasthan with a likely bigger mandate than the party’s performance in 2003, when the BJP won 120 seats with a record vote share of 39.85%. The party in 2008 lost the assembly elections, and the Congress party, led by Ashok Gehlot, formed the government.
The BJP, under the leadership of Rajnath Singh, was not pleased with the performance of Raje in the state. Leaders of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological parent of the Hindu nationalist BJP, were mulling the possibility of replacing Raje with a state-based leader such as Gulab Chand Kataria, an RSS worker and home minister in Raje’s government. Kataria was leader of the opposition in the Rajasthan assembly.
Although a section within the BJP blamed Raje for the dismal performance in the 2008 assembly election, support for her came from senior leader L.K. Advani. Raje also enjoys the support of Narendra Modi, the prime ministerial candidate of the BJP, as the Gujarat chief minister had started his assembly election campaign from Udaipur in Rajasthan.
Riding high on the support of some of the prominent BJP leaders, Raje was yet again made the BJP’s chief ministerial candidate of Rajasthan earlier this year. The party’s central leadership also made her the president of the Rajasthan unit of the BJP.
BJP leaders in Delhi admit that although their party has several prominent leaders in Rajasthan, the only one who has a mass following across the state is Raje. Her popularity can be gauged from the fact that she managed to break the record of Bhairon Singh Shekhawat as the BJP had managed to win 60% of the seats in 2003.
Interestingly, two years later in 1991, when the general election was announced, Raje again won the same seat for the second consecutive term with nearly 245,000 votes (58%).
She repeated her performance in the Lok Sabha in the 11th, 12th and 13th general elections.
Raje’s initiation in politics took place at an early age as she used to travel with her mother Vijayaraje Scindia, who was a member of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh. She joined the BJP in 1984, nearly 12 years after marrying into the erstwhile royal family of Dholpur in Rajasthan. Soon after joining the BJP, Raje was initially made only a member of the national executive; later she became vice-president of the youth wing of the BJP in Rajasthan in 1985.
Much before joining the BJP, Raje was in regular touch with senior leaders of the party, former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and former deputy prime minister Advani, as both of them used to often meet Raje’s mother to discuss political issues.
During the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government of Vajpayee, Raje was made junior foreign affairs minister in the first BJP-led government. She was Union minister of state for small scale industries and had independent charge of India’s department of space till January 2003. She was asked by the BJP leadership that year to lead the party’s campaign in Rajasthan’s assembly elections in 2003.
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