HT interview: Will win with larger margin than in 2019, says Gajendra Singh Shekhawat
Union Jal Shakti minister and Jodhpur MP, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat is working 24x7 to beat anti-incumbency to score a hat-trick win.
Union Jal Shakti minister and two-time Jodhpur MP, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat is working 24x7 to beat anti-incumbency to score a hat-trick win in Rajasthan’s second largest city. Excerpts from an interview:
What’s your forecast for Rajasthan? Do you continue to maintain that it will be 25/25 for the BJP?
Hundred percent! In 2014 also people from your fraternity were not ready to give us more than 13 seats. But when results came, we got 25/25. The situation was the same in 2019. Predictions were that anti-incumbency would inevitably lead to a loss of 7-9 seats. But we again made a clean sweep of it. Follow full coverage of the Lok Sabha elections here.
That was an unusual election due to Pulwama. Emotions ran high as Rajasthan majorly contributes to our armed forces....
No, it was the toughest election. We had lost power in the state three months earlier. People invariably have more complaints against the state government. Pulwama helped, it perhaps boosted our chances. But people voted for the trust Prime Minister Narendra Modi had earned in his first stint.
In the previous elections, the punters of Phalodi were betting on you. The satta market this time is giving at least five seats to the Opposition.
I don’t believe in that...
Even in the 2023 assembly polls, their projection were near perfect. They kept insisting the BJP will win big; that the Congress tally will hover around 60-70. That’s what broadly happened.
Sometimes their projections are correct but most of the time they’re wrong. In 2014 they literally failed. They were giving us 13 seats. We secured 25.
But now there are certain seats (at risk)....
Which seats are you talking about?
In Barmer an Independent or the Congress are tipped to win. Your party candidate is believed to be trailing at number three.
The Barmer situation is absolutely similar to the situation in 2014. The honourable Jaswant Singh ji, who was a taller personality than even Ashok Gehlot sahib, was then contesting as an Independent. Like today, both the BIP and the Congress candidates were Jats. Our candidate, Col Sona Ramji, was an import from the Congress. Yet, he won by a margin of one lakh votes.
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Sona Ram has returned to the Congress; you’ve got Manvendra Singh back. They both won from Barmer in the past.
So what (if Sona Ram is back to the Congress). We’ll catch up.
The Phalodi bazaar also counts Dausa and Churu among the constituencies where your party may face defeat. A couple of other seats are also at risk.
Chalo, let’s see.
How’s your position in Jodhpur?
That you should find out...
I did. There’s an element of anti-incumbency
Let us see what happens
But you have to win Jodhpur to prove right your forecast of 25/25.
The 2019 election was the toughest I fought. I was contesting against the chief minister’s son (Vaibhav Gehlot). The CM did whatever he could do; hardware or software, the entire government machinery was pumped in. All Congress leaders from the state, all ministers, five chief ministers and all former chief ministers were grounded here in Jodhpur. Gehlot Sahib did 122 meetings in my constituency. Still we won by 2.75 lakh votes. This time everything’s in our favour. We’ve just formed our government in the state. Last time only two out of eight MLAs in Jodhpur were with the BJP flag. The remaining were Congressmen. This time, all legislators bar one (Ashok Gehlot) are from the BJP. The ground situation is comfortable. A false narrative was weaved by people. But now the clouds are clearing out We are going to win with a larger margin than last time.
Had you been made the party chief with a considerate view taken by Vasundhara Raje and some of your other detractors, wouldn’t you have been the chief minister today?
From the background I come, the work domain isn’t decided by the person concerned. The mentors and seniors in the organisation take a call on what task has to be assigned to whom. I my case, I had everything going for me when I completed my term as president of Jodhpur’s Jai Narain Vyash University Students’ Union (in the early 1990s). But as per the decision of my mentors, I worked for 22-long years in the border areas without attending any of the programmes of the BJP. So much so, that I never visited the party office in my city.
Twenty-two years?
Twenty years, and then came a day in 2014 when I was called and told that I have to contest elections, that I have to be in day-to-day politics. Since that day I’m in politics. Leave alone the CM office or parliament, even now, if my mentors tell me that my work was more desired in the Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad or in Seva Bharati, I’d be happily going there. I’ll work with the same passion and zeal. I’m clear in my mind that wherever I’d be working, in whatever domain I’d be working, I’d be doing it for Bharat Mata.
When I was here for the 2019 elections, I remember having described you as Bhairon Singh Shekhawat-II in the making. Like Shekhawat senior, you come from the Shekhawati region with a gait reminiscent of him. Aren’t you disappointed that they you haven’t risen to that promise?
There was no promise. That’s not the culture of BJP.
No, no, I mean you were the promise....
I just don’t think like that.
Would you deny that Rajputs today are looking for a pan-India, not just a pan-Rajashtan face after Shekhawat and Jaswant Singh? What do you have to say to that?
Time will tell