Rajasthan Assembly Election Result 2023: 10 major reasons for Congress defeat

Rajasthan Assembly Election Result 2023: The failure of Congress to counter the BJP's campaign on appeasement politics, communal violence, murder of mahants and women atrocities, largely contributed to its impactful defeat in one of Hindi heartland's crucial states ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Modi factor, anti-incumbency against Congress MLAs and waning image of Ashok Gehlot are among reasons. Here are 10 reasons for Congress defeat.

Jaipur (Rajasthan) :The Rajasthan Assembly Election 2023 witnessed a fierce fight between PM Modi's guarantees and Congress CM Ashok Gehlot's promises. While Prime Minister Narendra Modi talked about good governance and security, Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot was bringing guarantee of social security i.e. welfare for the poor and backward classes.

Even after this, the results gave opposite results to Gehlot's promises. The following are 10 reasons as to why Gehlot's words did not carry weight when compared to those of PM Modi among the people of Rajasthan:

• The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had accused the Congress of appeasement in the election campaign and held the present government responsible for frequent incidents involving communal violence and unrest. The results showed that this had a great impact on the public sentiments of Rajasthan.
• Every star campaigner of BJP had repeatedly raised the tailor Kanhaiya Lal Teli murder case in Udaipur in their public meetings. The Congress government proved unsuccessful in countering this campaign.
• During the last 5 years, the Congress government could not find answers to the questions raised by the BJP regarding incidents of violence and murder of sages, saints, mahants and priests.
• Regarding women harassment, from PM Modi to BJP leaders kept mentioning the situation in Rajasthan, which went against Congress somewhere during voting.
• The Bharatiya Janata Party strongly raised a controversial statement given by Minister Shanti Dhariwal regarding the rape case.
• Many law and order issues in Rajasthan kept Ashok Gehlot in the dock during his 5 years as Home Minister and law and order was a major reason for Gehlot's defeat.
• In the battle of popularity between the Chief Minister and the MLAs, Gehlot had also admitted that the Congress MLAs were not successful in winning the hearts of the people. In such a situation, there was resentment against sitting MLAs of the ruling party and 17 ministers lost the elections.
• The Gurjar community wanted to see Sachin Pilot as the Chief Minister and supported Congress in 2018. But in 2023, the results of East Rajasthan and Gurjar dominated seats revealed that they did not favour Congress this time. They once again returned to the traditional party BJP and Congress had to bear the brunt of this.
• BJP also cornered the Congress government in Rajasthan regarding expensive petrol rates. Modi made allegations but Gehlot failed to respond.
• This time, the people of Rajasthan also rejected the leadership of Ashok Gehlot, who is known as Marwar's Gandhi and known as an embodiment of simplicity. Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot's OSD Lokesh Sharma also raised questions against his own leader regarding the election results. This clearly showed that during the elections, the leaders were only putting up a show of unity under pressure from the Congress high command, but the ground reality was different. The leaders divided into different factions as well as the Chief Minister in his fort were not satisfied with his stand.

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