It is the second Assembly election for the five-year-old Rashtriya Loktantrik Party (RLP), which was formed by disgruntled former BJP leader Hanuman Beniwal on the eve of the last State poll. The party won three seats and played a spoiler in a number of other constituencies in 2018. But five years on, the question it faces is whether it can graduate beyond nuisance value and emerge as a third power on Rajasthan’s bipolar political stage.
This week, in an effort to expand his party’s footprint, Mr. Beniwal joined hands with Dalit leader Chandrashekhar Azad’s Azad Samaj Party.
A few days later, a dozen people are crowding into Mr. Beniwal’s door at the party’s office in Jaipur, pressed shoulder to shoulder in the sweltering heat. Hundreds of others are waiting in the verandah. Both the temperature and tempers are running high. The door is locked from within, to stop impatient visitors from barging in.
Political arithmetic
Inside, sitting in an air-conditioned room, Mr. Beniwal looks exhausted, the blistering campaign seemingly taking a toll on him. He straight away launches into explaining the State’s political arithmetic, underlining why the RLP should not be dismissed as a marginal player. “Our party was formed just a month before the last election. But our performance was better than the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), who have been around for longer. We fought in 58 seats, getting 2.4% of thetotal votes polled, while the BSP fought in 190 seats, cornering only 4% vote share,” he says.
If there is any target that the RLP has set for itself this time around, Mr. Beniwal does not share. Instead he speaks of rhetorical goals. “This time, we will have an exemplary performance,” he says. When pressed for specifics, he speaks in terms of vote share rather than a seat count. “Last time, the ‘others’ group got nearly 80 lakh votes out of the 3.56 crores votes cast. This time, the polling will exceed 4 crore and our alliance RLP-ASP will poll anything between 1.5 crore to 2 crore votes,” he claims.
The two partners, Mr. Beniwal and Mr. Azad, are casting the net wider looking for more allies. The RLP leader does not rule out allying with the All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AlMIM), but is not sure about joining hands with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
‘Not just a Jat party’
“It will be a hung Assembly,” Mr. Beniwal proclaims. His narrative for this election is that, without the RLP-ASP, the voters are left with a choice between a corrupt Congress and an inert BJP. “Congress looted the public freely and the BJP remained silent for five years. The two are hand-in-glove, they are together in fleecing the voters here. There is no difference between the two,” he asserts.
He refuses to be tied down as a Jat party alone. “Every political party began with a certain vote base, like Yadavs for the Samajwadi Party or Jatavs for the BSP in U.P. For the RLP, Jats are the building bloc. But we work for all 36 communities,” he avers.
How organic is an alliance between a Jat-dominant party and a Dalit outfit, considering the history of antagonism between the two communities? “Leave aside a stray incident here or there, both our communities, Jats and Dalits, have been exploited and suppressed by feudal Rajput lords. The Jat has been fighting against feudal injustices,” Mr. Beniwal says.
While he talks about giving the Rajasthan voters a third alternative, with polling less than 25 days away, his party has only announced candidates for 10 seats. “We are screening the biodatas and working overtime. You will hear from us soon,” he says.
