Months after he rebelled against the party, and then called it off after receiving a call from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the BJP, late on Thursday, appointed Rajya Sabha MP Madan Rathore its Rajasthan unit president.
The 70-year-old Rathore replaces C P Joshi who had offered to resign a couple of days ago in the aftermath of the BJP losing 11 seats in the state in the Lok Sabha elections. This was a major setback for the party, which had won all 25 parliamentary seats in Rajasthan in 2014 and 2019.
A relatively unknown and low-profile leader, Rathore was twice elected to the Assembly, in 2003 and 2013, from Sumerpur in Pali district. On being denied a ticket in last year’s elections, he raised the banner of revolt. Then came a phone call from Modi. Rathore said the PM “spoke just one line, ‘go and withdraw’ and that’s what I did quietly, straightaway; there was nothing left for me to say”.
Later in November, at a rally in Pali, Rathore spoke just before the PM and invited him to address the crowd. Earlier this year, after being announced as the party’s Rajya Sabha pick, he said one needs to have patience and that the party recognises those who are patient. He added that at the Pali rally Modi had called and “dhandhas bandhaya (consoled)” him on stage in full public view.
Party sources said Rathore was appointed as there was a need to “balance caste equations” ahead of the bypolls for five Assembly seats in the state. Both CM Bhajan Lal Sharma and outgoing party chief Joshi are Brahmins. Rathore, who is said to have a good equation with former Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, hails from the OBC Ghanchi caste.
Moulded by RSS
Both times Rathore was in the Assembly happened to be during Raje’s tenure as CM. His first Assembly win came in 2003 when he defeated Bina Kak of the Congress. However, he was overlooked in 2008, allegedly following differences with then state BJP president Om Mathur. Again fielded in 2013, Rathore defeated Kak once more. Between 2014 and 2018, he remained the party’s deputy chief whip in the Assembly. But he was again overlooked for the 2018 and 2023 Assembly polls.
Rathore has been associated with the RSS for decades, having joined it when he was a teenager. He underwent “officers’ training” at the Sangh Shiksha Varg thrice — in 1968, when he was just 14, as per his Rajya Sabha profile, and again in 1971, and 1972. At the time, he was active in the ABVP, the students’ wing of the RSS, and played a role in students’ union elections. For most of the 1970s, he remained an RSS pracharak and was active in Pali and Jaipur’s rural belt. During Emergency, he is credited with publishing the Krantidoot newspaper and “leading an organised struggle against the Emergency”.
He was associated with various movements in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as in the Ram Janmabhoomi movement for which he was imprisoned in 1992. By the 1980s, he had also moved to the BJP and was its Pali district treasurer from 1987 to 1989 and its Pali district president for four terms: 1989-’92, 1992-’96, 2003-’05 and 2013-’15.
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