National

Waiting game on candidates’ lists

JAIPUR: The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and the opposition Congress in Rajasthan have failed to keep the date for announcement of their party candidates’ lists for the upcoming Assembly elections. If the initial competition between them had appeared to be to come out first with the list for the polls due on December 4, now the strategy adopted by both clearly is of a waiting game -- making the other side release the names first.

At the very outset both parties had promised one list before Diwali. The BJP central election in-charge for Rajasthan, Venkaiah Naidu, had announced at the party office here that “the BJP would be out with its first list before the Congress”. The Congress, not to be left behind, had reacted announcing that the party’s first list would be out by October 15.

The BJP, which soon after got into a rather non-transparent exercise of candidate selection, indicated that it was in no hurry to announce the names. The Congress, whose State Election Committee had carried out its task at one sitting here to authorise party president Sonia Gandhi to choose the official candidates, gave another date – September 30 -- for the list. Thereafter the date was pushed further ahead, first to October 15 and then to “any time before Diwali”.

In the meantime, other political parties, including the Bahujan Samaj Party -- likely the third biggest player in the elections here this time round -- the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Communist Party of India, the Janata Dal (Secular), the assorted group of “Third Front” headed by a former BJP leader, Chandraraj Singhvi, and a few other parties came out with their lists.

After preliminary talks about declaring the candidates’ names well in advance to facilitate their going out to start their campaigns in their constituencies, the BJP and the Congress are now watching each other’s moves. This is because in the caste-dominated Rajasthan politics the winning chances of any given candidate are decided by his/her caste -- and also by the caste of his/her opponents. At times the candidate belonging to one caste has to be countered by the same caste, or if there are too many in the race from the same caste, then a person from the next biggest caste group might be the best bet.

Now the BJP on its part has made it clear that the party list would come out only after the proposed “Vijay Sankalp Maha Kumbh” to be addressed by senior leaders L. K. Advani and Rajnath Singh here on November 6. The Congress sources, though, insist that the candidates have been finalised for 180 seats out of the total of 200, but are not giving any new date.

Despite the cautious approach by the political parties in not giving out any clue on the official list, the media guess lists of candidates have already triggered off protests from the followers of ticket aspirants. The Pradesh Congress Committee office witnessed one such protest turning ugly on Monday when the supporters of a ticket seeker from Adarsh Nagar in Jaipur broke the glass panes of the room of the State president C. P. Joshi.

Both the BJP and the Congress are wary of revolts from the party men who are going to be denied tickets, especially when other parties are waiting to nominate them. The BSP -- going by the trends in the 2003 Assembly elections -- is the most receptive party when it comes to rebels from other parties.

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