A day after the Opposition BJP released the first list of its candidates for the Rajasthan Assembly election, protests emerged on Tuesday in Tonk district’s Deoli-Uniara constituency against Gujjar leader Vijay Bainsla being fielded for the polls. The BJP workers in the region described him as a “parachute candidate”.
Mr. Bainsla is the son of Gujjar Aarakshan Sangharsh Samiti leader, the late Kirori Singh Bainsla, who had played an instrumental role in getting the Most Backward Class (MBC) status for the community. Mr. Bainsla, who left his corporate sector job, has been agitating for appointments to the reserved backlog posts and other facilities for Gujjars, besides organising the community’s yatras.
Congress leader Harish Chandra Meena won the Deoli-Uniara seat in the 2018 Assembly election and defeated BJP’s Rajendra Gujjar. Former MLAs Mr. Gujjar and Rajkumar Meena led a protest against giving a ticket to Mr. Bainsla, saying he was an outsider and had no connection with the constituency.
Mr. Gujjar led a march of the BJP workers to Jaipur to meet the State unit leaders and raise the issue before them. Even though the seat is Gujjar-dominated, the party workers and local leaders have pointed out that fielding an outsider would fail to get the community’s support for the BJP. Mr. Gujjar said the party should rethink about its decision.
BJP MP Ramesh Bidhuri, appointed the party’s election in-charge of Tonk district, tried to convince the party workers in an interaction with them. He said that while Mr. Bainsla was a permanent resident of Rajasthan, it was former Deputy Chief Minister Sachin Pilot, elected from Tonk, who was the “real outsider”, as he belonged to Uttar Pradesh. “I will convey the party workers’ sentiments to the central leaders and work for our candidate’s victory,” he said.
The BJP seems to have made an attempt to counter the popularity of Mr. Pilot, who is a Gujjar, in Tonk district by fielding Mr. Bainsla. Gujjars comprise the second most dominant group at the Tonk seat, after Muslims. Not a single Gujjar candidate of the BJP had won anywhere in the State in the 2018 Assembly polls.
Among the four constituencies of Tonk district, the BJP registered victory in Malpura alone in 2018, while the Congress candidates had won at Deoli-Uniara, Niwai and Tonk. Mr. Pilot had defeated BJP’s Yunus Khan, a Minister in the Vasundhara Raje government, by a heavy margin of 54,179 votes in Tonk.
