BJP wrests Rajasthan from Congress, Gehlot's welfare schemes fail to do trick

The BJP wrested Rajasthan on Sunday winning 115 seats out of the 199 where polling took place as the Congress failed to buck the states threedecade revolvingdoor trend in which the voters reject the party in powerTwelve hours after counting began the result from one seat Udaipur Wati was still awaited with the Congress leading On 68 other seats its candidates were declared winnersA slew of welfare schemes introduced by the Ashok Gehlot government in the runup to the November 25 assembly polls fell flat before the aggressive BJP campaign led by Prime Minister Narendra ModiAnd hours before the results were largely in Gehlot conceded defeat on social mediaWe humbly accept the mandate given by the people of Rajasthan This is an unexpected result for everyone This defeat shows that we were not completely successful in taking our plans laws and innovations to the public the outgoing CM said on XHe later submitted his resignation to Governor Kalraj MishraThe Rajasthan Assembly has 200 seats but the contest on one was postponed due to the death of a candidateSmaller parties picked up a handful of seats in what was essentially a twoparty contestThe Bharat Adivasi Party won three seats and the Bahujan Samaj Party got two The Rashtriya Loktantrik Party and the Rashtriya Lok Dal bagged one each while the independents got eightA little over two percentage points separated the vote share of the two top parties According to tentative Election Commission figures BJP polled 4169 percentage of the votes cast and the Congress 3953Last time less than one percentage point separated the winner from the loserIt was not immediately clear whom the BJP will pick as next chief minister During the campaign Modi had made it clear that lotus the partys poll symbol will be its faceVasundhara Raje a former CM who retained her Jhalrapatan assembly constituency by a margin of 53193 votes is among the several frontrunners Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla and Union Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal are also said to be in the raceJaipur Rural MP Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore a former Union minister who won the Jhotwara assembly seat by a margin of 50167 votes too is said to be a candidate for the top job in the stateHe is among the MPs who were asked to contest the state polls by the party which did not want to take any chancesApart from Rajasthan elections were announced at the same time in Madhya Pradesh Chhattisgarh Telangana and Mizoram in what was dubbed the semifinal before the 2024 Lok Sabha polls On Sunday the BJP won MP and Chhattisgarh as wellCelebrations broke out at the BJPs Rajasthan headquarters as the party crossed the majoritymark in terms of trends Party workers raised slogans hailing Prime Minister Narendra ModiUnion minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat iquest also mentioned as a CM possibility iquest took a dig at Gehlot as it became clear from the trends that the BJP would winThe magic has ended and Rajasthan has come out of the spell of the magician People have voted for the honour of women and for the welfare of the poor he said alluding to Gehlots past as a magicians sonThe election in Sriganganagars Karanpur seat was postponed due to the death of Congress candidate Gurmeet Singh KoonarSeveral colleagues of Gehlot in the state ministry lost as the state lived up to its strong antiincumbency tradition Among them was Disaster Management Minister Govind Ram Meghwal who was also the Congress campaign committee chiefOther losers from the outgoing Congress ministry included Bhanwar Singh Bhati Kolayat seat Shakuntala Rawat Bansur Vishvendra Singh Deeg Kumher Ramesh Chand Meena Sapotara Shale Mohammad Pokaran and Udailal Anjana NimbaheraRajasthan Assembly Speaker C P Joshi lost in Nathdwara to the BJPs Vishvaraj Singh MewarGehlot won Sardarpura seat in Jodhpur for the sixth time but with a reduced margin 26396 votes compared 45597 the last time He defeated BJP candidate Mahendra RathoreIn a setback to the BJP Deputy Leader of Opposition in the Rajasthan assembly Satish Poonia lost the Amber seat to Prashant Sharma of the Congress by 9092 votesAhead of the elections both the Congress and BJP struggled with factionalism within their ranks But the infighting within the Congress was more in the open with Sachin Pilot mounting a rebellion against Gehlot in 2020Just ahead of the elections the partys central leadership ensured a truce between the twoThe BJP targeted the Congress government over communal violence accusing it also of iquestappeasementiquest corruption and not having a grip on law and orderApart from projecting its welfare schemes the states ruling party tried to make the Eastern Rajasthan Canal Project a major plank accusing the BJPled Centre of not giving it the iquestpromisediquest national project statusIn the outgoing Assembly the ruling Congress had 107 MLAs BJP 70 and Rashtriya Loktantrik Party RLPT three Also the CPIM and Bhartiya Tribal Party BTP had two seats each and the Rashtriya Lok Dal oneThere were 13 independents in the outgoing assembly and two seats Udaipur and Karanpur are vacantThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever