After the support of MLAs from third front parties and independents in completing the full five-year tenure of the Ashok Gehlot government, they are again likely to play an important role in case of a close contest in the election battle of Rajasthan. However, these parties themselves are looking to contest the election on a lukewarm kind of approach.
Before the nomination process for the assembly elections in Rajasthan, it was expected that the third front parties would pose a big challenge to the BJP and Congress candidates, but now after the nomination process and during the election campaign, the challenge from these parties is not looking much effective. Not a single party among these could field candidates on all 200 seats and there are hardly 10-15 seats on which candidates of these parties are making the contest multi-poler.
In the assembly election of 2018, 14 candidates of third parties won the election. Six of them joined Congress and the rest also remained firm with Gehlot throughout his tenure as the Congress with one of its allies just on the majority mark. with 101 seats.
Reports suggest Assembly polls will be a close contest
This time as per the reports the contest is likely to be close and in the case the battle goes down the wire, the winning candidates will play a significant role in shaping the government.
The approach of these parties towards the election is not looking very promising and are likely to be effective on just 15-20 seats.
80 parties are contesting the election in the state including the national parties like Congress, BJP, CPM, AAP and BSP but only BJP has candidates on all 200 assembly seats while Congress is in the fray for 200 seats with one seat given to RLD.
Apart from BJP and Congress, it is BSP that has fielded its candidates on 185 seats, however, the nomination of two of these has been cancelled while 4-5 have given support to the candidates of BJP or Congress. Three of them are in Jaipur itself. One Imraan Khan left the party before filling the nomination and got a ticket from Congress for the Tijara assembly constituency.
Mayawati's power-packed rallies
The star campaigner of the party BSP supremo Mayawati has been in the state for the last four days and has addressed just 8 rallies mainly in east Rajasthan.
The state party president Bhagwan Singh Baba said that the party has expelled the rebels and is in the fray with full force.
The Aam Aadmi Party had announced to contest on all 200 seats before the elections. Party supremo Arvind Kejriwal and Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann had done a town hall program also but the party is contesting only on 88 seats. Talking about the election campaign, there has not been a single visit by any national leader of the party including Kejriwal. However, it is being said that the tour of Kejriwal and Bhagwant Mann will start on Tuesday. The party's state president Naveen Paliwal said that we are contesting the elections with full strength. Three of our leaders have been put in jail. Kejriwal was campaigning for MP and now coming to Rajasthan.
Nagaur MP Hanuman Beniwal's party RLP was considered a big factor in this election. In the last elections, the party had won three seats and stood second on many seats. This time the party has fielded candidates on 78 seats and has also formed an alliance with Azad Samaj Party Kanshi Ram, which has fielded candidates on 47 seats. Party supremo Hanuman Beniwal is actively campaigning, but the party has refrained from fielding the candidate on the seats of Ashok Gehlot, Vasundhara Raje, Divya Maderna and some others.
Owaisi fields candidate on 10 seats
Similarly, MP Asaduddin Owaisi was continuously visiting Rajasthan before the elections and even held public meetings at many places. It was claimed that he was eyeing 40 Muslim-dominated seats in Rajasthan, but now he has fielded candidates on only 10 seats and has so far visited Rajasthan only once or twice during the campaign.
Other major parties are Dushyant Chaitala's party Jannayak Janata Party and leftist party CPIM. JJP had talked about contesting elections on 28 seats, but the candidates are only 20, while CPIM has 17 candidates in the fray. Bharatiya Tribal Party, which won two seats in the tribal areas of South Rajasthan in the last elections, has been divided this time. Bharat Adivasi Party, a breakaway party, has fielded 27 candidates, while 17 candidates of BTP are contesting the elections.
This was the performance of other parties in the last elections:
BSP - 6 seats
RLP – 3 Seats
CPM - 2 Seats
BTP - 2 Seats
RLD – 1 seat
