Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot with Congress leaders Sachin Pilot and Govind Singh Dotasra during the ‘Congress Guarantee Rally’ at Nohar in Hanumangarh district on November 16, 2023. (PTI)
While the BJP is banking on their angst and ambition, the ruling Congress is dreading them given their anger on successive exam paper leaks that have become the single biggest electoral issue in Rajasthan polls
When Rajasthan votes on November 25, as many as 22,71,647 first-time voters will head to the polling booths, with a stable job and never having to migrate for employment on their checklist while deciding the ballot. While the BJP is banking on their angst and ambition, the ruling Congress is dreading them given their anger on successive exam paper leaks that have become the single biggest electoral issue in Rajasthan election 2023.
The nearly 23 lakh new voters have the ability to swing electoral outcomes in more than 100 seats in Rajasthan, including constituencies like Hawa Mahal in capital Jaipur and Churu where the margin of win was wafer-thin in the 2018 election. The Congress fears that new voters in such constituencies and their anger can be decisive.
Take Hawa Mahal for instance. Back in 2018, Congress veteran Mahesh Joshi won the seat by just 9,282 votes. The grand old party has denied a ticket to Public Health Engineering Department minister Joshi from the seat this time and has instead fielded RR Tiwari, which has brewed trouble within the Congress. In addition, the 15,000-plus first-time voters in the constituency could spell trouble for the Congress.
Another seat that falls under Jaipur is Malviya Nagar, where former minister Kali Charan Saraf had won by a margin of 1,704 votes for the BJP last time. If an equal number of new voters, who have been added to the list in this constituency, vote keeping the alleged corruption of paper leaks in mind, it will spell trouble for the Congress.
In Churu, BJP’s Leader of Opposition Rajendra Rathore won the last time and the candidate this time is Harlal Saharan. Rathore had won in 2018 by a margin of just 1,850 votes. If the Congress thought it stood a chance to beat the BJP here given that Rathore — who has won seven times from the seat — has not been repeated, first-time voters may play spoilsport.
Against Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, who continues to be the favourite from Sardarpura given that he has not lost from here since 1998, the BJP has fielded Mahendra Singh Rathore, a Rajput professor who has been part of the Rajasthan Council of Ministers.
In 2018, Gehlot had defeated BJP’s Sambhu Singh by a margin of more than 45,000 votes. But an addition of more than 25,000 new voters, many of them first-time voters, can help the BJP narrow down the margin. Even a marginal decrease in the gap will likely be pitched by the BJP as a “moral victory” against the Congress’s sitting Chief Minister ahead of Lok Sabha elections next year.
The BJP has also gone all out to woo the youth in its manifesto for Rajasthan, similar to the women-centric promises in Madhya Pradesh. From 2.5 lakh government jobs in the next five years to the appointment of 15,000 government doctors and 20,000 paramedical staff in the state, the saffron party’s manifesto has been wooing this segment.
It has even promised investment worth Rs 40,000 crore, which would mean more jobs in the private sector, a clear attempt to tap into these 22,71,647 first-time voters who may very well decide the election this time.