Vasundhara Raje hasn’t kept just the central BJP leadership in tenterhooks over her ‘will-she, won’t-she, when-will-she’ resignation drama. Since early August when the first moves were made to replace the former Rajasthan CM as the Leader of Opposition, only to be stalled as she dug her heels in, the Rajasthan BJP seems to be slipping in its role as the main opposition party in the state.

BJP leaders grudgingly admit that though an ‘unofficial’ leadership, sans Raje and her coterie, has been steering the party for two months, the uncertainty over her fate has left the BJP unable to put up an effective opposition in Rajasthan. From the BJP’s boycott of the special Assembly session late in August, which saw the ruling Congress pass six Bills without debate in a matter of minutes, to the main opposition party’s silence in the face of growing public outrage over rising prices, acute electricity and water shortages — several snapshots frame the same absence. They speak of the lack of a functioning opposition in Rajasthan ever since the beginning of the Raje resignation crisis.

Senior BJP leaders privately admit that the party has only been able to mobilise workers at a local level. “The problems in the state are many and the BJP is strenuously protesting against the failure of the Ashok Gehlot government in several districts, but the efforts are scattered. We have not been able to ignite a state-wide movement,” says a leader. Following the appointment of Arun Chaturvedi as the new state unit president, after Om Mathur was shunted out on moral ground following defeats in the Assembly and parliamentary elections, no new appointments have been made in the state unit.

... contd.