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FOR OVER a week, a loose cluster of mediapersons has been patiently waiting outside 13, Civil Lines, the official residence of former Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje in state capital Jaipur.
On Monday, as the BJP characteristically picked a surprise name – Mohan Yadav – as Madhya Pradesh CM, the strongest ripples were perhaps felt at the gates of this bungalow.
Yadav was the second unexpected choice after the BJP named Vishnu Deo Sai as its CM for Chhattisgarh, and the message would have got to the cloistered Raje.
The TV cameras have been keeping a constant vigil on those entering and exiting her bungalow, among them BJP legislators, party leaders and supporters of Raje. Most of them know better than to answer questions on the 70-year-old Raje’s chances of becoming the Rajasthan CM for a third time.
It has been more than a week now since the BJP won Rajasthan comfortably with 115 seats. This is an unusual delay for not just the Rajasthan BJP but also Raje, arguably the tallest leader of the party in the state since she first became CM in 2003 and repeated the same in 2013. But that was before the Modi era began in the BJP.
The party pointedly did not go in with a CM face this time. Raje was herself seen to have kept a distance from the BJP campaign, driven by the central leadership.
On December 3, as the results came, Raje visited the party headquarters in Jaipur to a welcome by her supporters. But, the scale of the BJP win was perhaps not the good news she was looking for – it leaves the party leadership with no need to humour her.
Since then, the senior BJP leader has been at her bungalow, barring the time she went to Delhi on December 6 and met BJP national president J P Nadda.
The flurry following the charge by the father of one BJP MLA, that Raje’s son Dushyant Singh was holding his son and four other MLAs sequestered at a hotel, has died down – the episode still shrouded in mystery. Few believe the seasoned politician would have mounted a serious challenge to leadership with such an amateur move.
However, more than that, it is the choices of the BJP leadership for Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh – part of the process to cultivate a new crop of leaders, in the current BJP parlance – that may have deepened the shadows over 13, Civil Lines.
On Monday, even as the observers from Delhi huddled in Bhopal to pick Yadav for Madhya Pradesh, Raje’s media adviser Mahendra Bhardwaj frantically chased away reporters assembled outside her house saying there are “no MLAs inside”.
Anger gave way to virtual pleading, as Bhardwaj told mediapersons to not try and get a peak inside the bungalow. “Is it a sin if any MLA comes to visit their leader? There is not a single MLA inside,” Bhardwaj, who has been with Raje through thick and thin, said, before disappearing into the gates of her bungalow.
However, that many MLAs have been coming to meet Raje is an open secret, particularly those for whom she had campaigned before the elections. The Raje camp puts their total number at more than 45, saying that of them, 30-plus won.
The suspense is expected to last at least another day, with a meeting of the newly elected BJP MLAs for Rajasthan, in presence of central observers, scheduled for 4 pm Tuesday at the state BJP headquarters.
Union Minister Rajnath Singh is one of the observers along with Saroj Pandey and Vinod Tawde.
Notably, Rajnath is one of the few remaining BJP leaders from the Atal Bihari Vajpayee era, and hence a Raje contemporary.
Sources close to Raje said she is likely to emerge only in time for her to leave for the BJP legislature party meeting.
Asked about who would be the new CM, at least one newly elected BJP MLA was pretty voluble. The party’s tallest tribal leader in Rajasthan, Kirodi Lal Meena, said: “The person who is wanted by Modiji, wanted by the central parliamentary board should be (the chief minister). It will be a BJP member who will be the Chief Minister.”
Meena incidentally has had a shaky relationship with Raje and once left the party over differences with her. He also let it be known that it was the first time he would attend a BJP legislature party meeting. Asked specifically about 2003, when he was also elected MLA, Meena said no such meeting was needed then as Raje was unilaterally declared the CM.
Asked about his “pasand (choice)” for CM, Meena joked: “Meri pasand Golma hai (My choice is Golma).” Golma Devi, Meena’s wife and a former minister, did not contest this time.
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