BJP has taken Rajasthan as Gehlot looked to Delhi: survey

The BJP’s Vasundhara Raje is in poll position to return as Rajasthan Chief Minister because Ashok Gehlot, the current Chief Minister from the Congress, has not done enough in his five years in charge while Raje has learned from the mistakes she made leading the state from 2003 to 2008.

A CNN-IBN- The Week survey conducted by Delhi-based research organisation CSDS and Lokniti that covered 4427 respondents in the state gave Raje an edge with 51 percent of respondents while just 27 percent her incumbent rival Gehlot.

While satisfaction with Gehlot’s government and his party were at or just above the 50 percent mark, respondents felt the state was worse off under his adminstration: 47 percent felt the state of the roads in the state had deteriorated compared to just 29 percent who thought the situation had improved.

Likewise 35 percent felt the law and order situation had suffered under Gehlot, compared to 13 percent who felt it was better.

Gehlot is also buffeted by an anti-incumbency factor that plays particularly strongly in the state. “Since 1993 in every election in Rajasthan, the ruling party has lost, Sandeep Shastri, the the Vice Chancellor of Jain University in Bangalore,” pointed out during a CNN-IBN panel discussion on the poll results. “It will require a great effort from the Congress to retain the state.”

Right-wing journalist Swapan Dasgupta felt Raje was reaping the benefits of standing her ground and taking on a specific faction of the party while asserting her clout. Doing so allowed her to run a united election campaign, which was not the case in 2008. Soni Mishra, the Week’s correspondent for Rajasthan, agreed.

“She has made amends in the way she functions,” Mishra, said. “She has reached out to the leaders with whom she has had problems in the past and even with appointing candidates, she is consulting leaders.”

Gehlot has responded over the last 12 months or so by announcing a number of welfare schemes, but the panel felt it was a case of too little, too late.

“It has changed the mood somewhat in his favour,” Mishra said. “But the real issues of governance and price rise have again come to the fore again.”

Pushpesh Pant, former professor of international relations at Jawarharlal Nehru University, felt the voters would happily accept the freebies and then vote the way they think is right anyway. He also felt that Gehlot had been hamstrung by the control the central Congress command exerts.

“If the Congress refuses to empower a Chief Minister and let him take his own decisions, then not one but both eyes are on Delhi to see how his approval ratings are doing with them.”

The poll shows BJP winning 41 percent of the vote and anywhere from 115 to 125 seats, up from 96 in 2008, while Congress would get 32 percent of the vote translating to 60 to 68 seats, down from 96 seats.

Congress has been hit by the lack of support in two key communities in the state – the Jats and the Thakur Rajputs - which each give the BJP a 26 percentage point advantage. The Congress does have a higher vote share among Dalits, scheduled tribes and Muslims, but apart from the Muslims, these differences tended to be in single digits, according to Shastri.

“The momentum is firmly in support of Raje,” Mishra said. “She is becoming the next chief minister of Rajasthan. “Nothing is going to change that … People remember her as a better administrator than Gehlot. She had a better hold of the bureaucracy.”

According to the panel, the one factor that could distrupt this analysis was ticket distribution. “Both parties are prone to factions playing a role,” Shastri said. “If ticket distribution has certain challenges, it could have an impact.” Shastri added that there was a 26 percent disenchantment with sitting MLAs.

For Dasgupta, the Rajasthan election was also a referendum on so-called Sonainomics because Rajasthan had been at the forefront for introducing welfare schemes, including the distribution of free medicine.

“A victory in Rajashan will enable [the Congress> to say this is the model we will tranlsate to the rest of the country. A defeat will raise the question of whether freebies ar the way to go.”