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New Delhi: The closely watched Rajasthan civic election results have given the BJP a clear numerical advantage over the Congress. But the more revealing part of the verdict lies in what happened in the political turfs of the BJP’s most prominent leaders and the signs of voter fatigue with the ruling party that are beginning to emerge.
In several of these areas, the BJP either failed to secure a majority or was pushed into a contest where independents emerged as the decisive force.
The sharpest example is Bharatpur, the home district of Chief Minister Bhajan Lal Sharma. In the 65-member Bharatpur Municipal Corporation, independents won 36 wards, compared with 20 for the BJP and seven for the Congress. The BSP and RLP won one ward each. Independents therefore emerged as the dominant political force in the Chief Minister’s own home turf.
That result is difficult to ignore because Bhajan Lal Sharma was not a passive observer in the election. He campaigned extensively for the BJP and held roadshows, something that rarely happens in civic polls. The results have therefore provided a test of how far the Chief Minister’s political influence extends into local elections. The answer from Bharatpur was distinctly uncomfortable for the BJP.
The picture was similar in Pali, the home turf of BJP state president Madan Rathore. In the 65-member Pali Municipal Corporation, Congress won 29 wards, BJP won 21 and independents won 15.
No party therefore came close to a majority, leaving independents in a position to determine the formation of the board. Pali is particularly significant because Rathore is not simply a local BJP leader. As the state president, he heads the party organisation in Rajasthan. A result in which Congress emerges as the largest party in his own political base, while independents hold 15 seats, therefore has an organisational significance beyond a single municipal contest.
The result in Jodhpur, whose MP is Union minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, also carries significance. Shekhawat is among those who is seen as “CM in waiting”.
The city ended with the BJP and Congress level at 44 wards each, while independents won 11. The BJP therefore could not convert its broader political strength into a majority in one of Rajasthan’s most politically important urban centres. With 11 independents holding the balance, the final control of the civic body becomes a matter of post-election arithmetic rather than a straightforward BJP mandate.
Ajmer produced another setback for the BJP. Congress won 37 of the 80 wards, BJP won 32 and independents took 11.
The result is notable because Ajmer is associated with senior BJP leadership, including Union minister Bhagirath Choudhary and Assembly Speaker Vasudev Devnani. The failure to secure a majority in a city where the party has prominent political representation adds to the pattern of senior leaders being unable to translate their political standing into an uncomplicated municipal victory.
The same question arises in the areas associated with other senior BJP leaders, including state ministers Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, Madan Dilawar, Zoraram Kumawat and Sanjay Sharma. Candidates in several wards associated with these leaders did not deliver the kind of decisive performance that the prominence of the political leadership might have suggested.
The point is not that a minister’s political career can be judged from the defeat of a municipal councillor. It cannot. Municipal elections are unusually sensitive to candidate selection, personal equations, caste arithmetic, civic grievances and factional disputes. But when setbacks involving several prominent leaders appear across different parts of the state, the cumulative pattern becomes relevant.
There is another important example in Jhalawar, a traditional BJP stronghold associated with former chief minister and present national vice president Vasundhara Raje. In the 45-member Jhalawar Municipal Council, Congress won 29 wards against 13 for the BJP. The result is particularly striking because Raje remains the BJP MLA from neighbouring Jhalrapatan and the district has long been regarded as one of her strongest political bases. The BJP, however, managed to retain the Jhalrapatan municipality.
Taken together, these results present an uncomfortable picture for the BJP.
In Bharatpur, the Chief Minister’s home turf, independents became the largest force. In Pali, the state president’s home turf, Congress emerged as the largest party. In Jodhpur, BJP and Congress finished level. In Ajmer, Congress finished ahead of BJP. In Jhalawar, a traditional BJP stronghold associated with Vasundhara Raje, Congress secured a decisive lead in the municipal council.
The statewide numbers, however, tell a different story.
The BJP won 4,179 of the wards for which final results were available, against 3,613 for Congress and 2,273 for independents. BJP therefore remains comfortably ahead of Congress in terms of seats and is the single largest party across Rajasthan’s urban local bodies.
But the vote-share figures make the result considerably more interesting. The BJP received 37,35,567 votes, or 36.11 per cent, while Congress received 36,35,952 votes, or 35.14 per cent. The difference between the two parties was therefore just 99,615 votes, or 0.97 percentage point. Independents collectively secured more than a quarter of the vote.
The BJP has consequently converted a relatively narrow vote advantage into a substantially larger advantage in wards. That is a genuine organisational achievement. But it also means the raw seat tally gives a less complete picture of the underlying electoral contest.
Jaipur provides the clearest illustration.
Across Jaipur district, Congress received 6,76,815 votes, while BJP received 6,75,929. Congress therefore had a lead of 886 votes across the district. In Jaipur city, Congress received 5,65,848 votes against 5,52,713 for BJP, a Congress advantage of 13,135 votes.
Yet BJP won 78 wards and is set to form the board.
The result demonstrates the difference between aggregate popular support and the distribution of votes across individual wards. Ward delimitation is one explanation for the discrepancy. The two Jaipur municipal corporations were merged and the number of wards reduced from 250 to 150, fundamentally changing the electoral geography.
BJP’s institutional strength in Jaipur nevertheless remains considerable. The party has retained control of the municipal corporation for the seventh consecutive cycle. Congress won the mayor’s post through a direct election in 2009, when Jyoti Khandelwal became mayor, but the BJP still controlled the board. The party’s long institutional dominance in Jaipur therefore remains intact.
Yet even in one of the BJP’s strongest urban centres, the aggregate vote numbers do not show a large BJP advantage.
The same distinction is visible across the state’s ten municipal corporations. BJP secured outright majorities in four, Jaipur, Kota, Udaipur and Bhilwara. But in Ajmer, Jodhpur, Bharatpur, Alwar and Pali, it fell short of a majority, leaving independents in a position to determine the eventual political configuration. Congress emerged victorious in Bikaner.
This is why the independent vote matters. Independents won 2,273 wards and emerged as potential kingmakers in a large number of civic bodies where neither BJP nor Congress crossed the majority threshold. Their performance indicates that a significant section of the electorate is willing to move outside the two principal parties.
The Congress, meanwhile, has little reason to interpret the results as a revival. Its ward tally remains substantially below the BJP’s, and its urban institutional footprint has declined sharply from the previous cycle, when it had controlled or dominated 125 urban bodies compared with 64 for the BJP and seven for others.
But the Congress’s weakness should not be mistaken for an endorsement of the BJP.
The more important question for the BJP is what the election says about the political capital of its government and senior leadership. The party has been in power in Rajasthan for nearly three years. The civic elections therefore offered an opportunity to see how effectively that political capital has penetrated down to the ward level.
The results suggest that the transfer has been uneven.
A voter can support the BJP nationally and Narendra Modi personally, while still rejecting a particular BJP candidate, minister, councillor or local organisation. The Rajasthan results provide several examples of voters doing precisely that. Significantly, where they moved away from the BJP, they did not necessarily move to Congress. A substantial number chose independents.
That is potentially more significant for the BJP than a straightforward Congress gain would have been.
The BJP remains the winner of the election but the manner of the victory raises a different question.
The party has won while facing significant resistance in some of the political areas where its leadership should have been strongest. Its Chief Minister’s home district produced an independent majority. Its state president’s home turf produced a Congress plurality. Its Union ministers’ political areas did not produce overwhelming BJP victories. In one of its most established urban strongholds, Jaipur, Congress actually secured more votes even as BJP retained control of the board.