The BJP — contending fresh faces for the top jobs in the heartland states it won — appears to have reserved its biggest surprise for Rajasthan. Bhajanlal Sharma, named the new Chief Minister of Rajasthan, is a first- time MLA from Sanganer. The MLA, who’s from Bharatpur, wasn’t given ticket from there as the seat was n’t considered winnable for upper gentries.
Chhattisgarh’s new Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai has been a state BJP chief, a Union Minister of State, and a member of the BJP public working commission. Mr Sharma will have two deputies — “ People’s queen ” Diya Kumari, who was an applicant for the top post — and elderly leader Prem Chand Bairwa. One of the longest serving party- men in Rajasthan, Mr Sharma couldn’t be more different from Vasundhara Raje,
Who piloted state on behalf of the party for three terms. The 56- time-old, originally associated with the ABVP, the pupil sect of the party’s ideological tutor Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, has always kept a low profile. A state general clerk of the party, he’s seen as an organisation man, unlike Ms Raje, who was frequently seen to be at friction with the top leadership The selection of a Brahmin face is seen as a safe choice in Rajasthan,
where Rajputs and Jats are the dominant gentries. But picking a member from either community carries the threat of rear polarisation coming time – a situation the BJP couldn’t go. Vasundhara Raje was respectable to both communities as she, a quondam royal, was a Rajput who married into a Jat family. The BJP has been factoring in estate and class computation in a big way in the heartland states in the run- up to coming time’s general election.
Indeed so, there was enterprise that Ms Raje, the party’s altitudinous leader in the state, will be benched. The pattern is analogous to Madhya Pradesh, where four- time Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Chhattisgarh’s former Chief Minister Raman Singh, were dropped. Like Shivraj Chauhan in Madhya Pradesh history, Ms Raje was the one to propose the name of the new Chief Minister at the council party meeting this autumn.
The show of concinnity, however, has only drawn public attention to the elderly leaders. Throughout history, the former Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh had trended on social media, with violent enterprise on what would be coming for him.
