By Umakant Lakhera
DAUSA (RAJASTHAN)—Sikrai is one of the five seats in Dausa district. Children and women development minister in the Gehlot government Mamata Bhupesh is once again contesting from this seat.
The Congress election office is situated on the Bharatpur-Jaipur national highway. All the main party officials are from the Gurjar community here.
This seat is reserved for the scheduled caste. Who is running ahead and will the Congress repeat its performance of 2018? A Congress worker replied instantly that he was from the Gurjar community. He asserted that this time Congress would not get the entire Gurjar community votes.
Why was he saying so despite being from Congress? The Congress worker replied that he and his family would vote for the Congress but due to injustice to Sachin Pilot, Gujar community from the entire Rajasthan has moved away from Congress.
Given the Assembly election, Congress’s high command has brokered a truce between Ashok Gehlot and Sachin Pilot and thus stopped the war of words between the two. But Sachin Pilot is almost invisible from the hoardings and banners of the Congress.
In this background, common Gurjar voters and Pilot supporters are thinking that Gehlot would be the chief minister once again. Seemingly, the Gurjar voters are not ready to bring Congress into the government again.
It is speculated that the discontent among Gurjar voters in 40 seats of seven districts will cost the Congress dearly. These seven districts are: Dausa, Jaipur Rural, Alwar, Bharatpur, Karauli, Sawai Madhopur, Tonk and Jhalawar. There are around 40 thousand Gurjar voters in these 40 seats.
In addition to this, the discontent of Gujar voters, though less in number, from Dhaulapur to Ajmer Assembly seats can cause problems to Congress in a close contest.
Congress has fielded seven Gujar candidates including Sachin Pilot this time. But it is reported that the Gujar voters would for Congress only in those seats where the party candidate is a Gujar. It is claimed that Gujars would vote for BJP candidates if there is no Gujar candidate from the Congress.
In the last election, every section in Dausa district, including the Gujar voters, had voted for the Congress to make Sachin Pilot the Rajasthan chief minister. That is why Mamata Bhupesh had won her election by fifty thousand votes from Sikrai. But this time around, even the Congress workers are conceding that Mamata could lose by a huge margin.
Apart from Sikrai and Dausa people are abuzz with the discontent of Gujars, paper leaks and arbitrary distribution of tenders in three Assembly seats of Lalsot, Bandikui and Mahua.
Apart from the discontent of Sachin Pilot’s supporters and Gujar voters, the cases of paper leaks are also proving tough for the Congress candidates in all five seats of Dausa district.
There is no dearth of people in Dausa who believe that even if the entire Gujar society comes with the Congress, the fourteen paper leak cases would be very challenging for the Congress. They are of the view that those youths and their parents who are affected by the paper leak scam would not tolerate the next term for the Gehlot government.
The anguish among the affected youths of the paper leak scam can be easily observed.
It is claimed that the Congress would lose around one crore votes because of the paper leak cases. It is alleged that the papers were allegedly leaked in all the job tests including for the Police recruitment. One paper was leaked thrice.
Fifty-year-old Kanhaiya Lal works in a tractor showroom in Dausa. Though he seems assured of Murari Lal Meena from Dausa, he believes that Gujar voters are quite unhappy with Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot due to the Sachin Pilot factor.
Will the situation of Congress improve if both Sachin Pilot and Ashok Gehlot address a joint public meeting? To this question, a local youth, Nayab Singh Gurjar says, “Congress high command has ditched Sachin Pilot.”
He says that dishonouring Pilot is like dishonouring the Gurjar community.
There is an allegation that the Gehlot government has deliberately not made enough effort to ensure the completion of the eastern canal water project, resulting in a severe shortage of drinking water.
People also allege that the hardship of common people has increased manifold due to more VAT on petroleum products compared to UP.
Rising prices of petroleum products have directly affected the price hikes. Though many people hold the Modi government responsible for the rise in prices of petroleum products, on the rest issues the Gehlot government is facing the wrath of voters.
*Mr Umakant Lakhera is an Independent journalist and former president of the Press Club of India.
