Assembly elections: Old tricks did no good to old party in Rajasthan

JAIPUR: Hard selling its social sector schemes before the onset of assembly elections in Rajasthan failed as an electoral strategy for the Congress. Views differ on why this strategy, which had worked wonders electorally in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu for former chief ministers NT Rama Rao and M Karunanidhi, failed the Grand Old Party in Rajasthan.

Early on Sunday, soon after it had become clear that the BJP was leading in a majority of seats, outgoing CM Ashok Gehlot met the media and admitted defeat, all the time wondering what could have possibly gone so wrong for his party.

“They (the BJP in their manifesto) had also proposed similar schemes because they (the schemes) had genuinely become popular with the people.

However, the opposition was successful in imprinting on the people’s minds this impression that we brought the schemes six months before elections for political benefit. But this was not the case,” he said.

After all, populist schemes in MP and Chhattisgarh seems to have carried the day for Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Raman Singh.

“Clearly, the benefits of the scheme were not reaching the beneficiaries and they have given their verdict,” said Omkar Singh Lakhawat, state vice-president, BJP.

In her pre-poll tour, Vasundhara Raje had repeatedly pointed out that “when there are no public health centres and doctors, how can free medicine and inspection schemes work?” She had also made the now infamous remark of medicines being “poisons” – alluding that medicines past their expiry dates were being sold under the scheme.

Gehlot had countered this by citing the long queues at Rajasthan’s biggest Sawai Man Singh hospital, which saw patients coming from Gujarat because of the free medicines.

There have also been reports of patients coming in from Punjab at Bikaner to benefit from the free treatment scheme.

The jury is still out whether the drubbing that Gehlot & Co received holds a lesson for the political fraternity with regard to the electoral effectiveness of populist schemes.

Meanwhile, as non-partisan observers point out, the reality for Congress in Rajasthan is that people who have benefited from the Gehlot government’s schemes have also voted for the BJP.