It was the same in the second Modi cabinet in 2019, with two ministers of state were from the Jat community – Balyan and Kailash Chaudhary (from Rajasthan).
The first Modi cabinet of 2014 had Chaudhary Birender Singh (from Haryana) as a cabinet minister, and Sanwar Lal Jat (from Rajasthan) and Sanjeev Balyan (from UP) as ministers of state.
In contrast, Vajpayee’s cabinet from 1999 to 2004 had RLD’s the Ajit Singh and the BJP’s Sahib Singh Verma as ministers and Vasundhara Raje Scindia (married into a Jat family) as a minister of state. RLD leader Sompal Singh Shastri was also part of the council of ministers in 1998.
Back in October 1999, the Vajpayee government had also included the Jats in the list of OBCs for reservation in central services.
Political analysts and Jat leaders have cited the Modi government’s allegedly indifferent treatment of the community, and farmers and wrestlers in particular, as the reason behind Jat anger.
However, a senior BJP leader who didn’t want to be named said it was wrong to conclude that the party was against Jats or any caste.
“A Jat leader (Jagdeep Dhankhar) is the Vice President of India and was earlier a governor. Satyapal Malik, another Jat leader, has served as governor. Acharya Devvrat is yet another governor from the community,” he told ThePrint.
“Had the BJP been averse to the community, Jat leaders like Kiran Choudhry and Shruti Choudhry would not have joined the party,” he added, referring to the mother-daughter duo who defected to the BJP from the Congress Wednesday.
Also Read: Why Khattar government has decided to develop Haryana’s Agroha Dham as a tourist site
How Jats voted out BJP
Examining the BJP’s performance in Jat-dominated parliamentary constituencies reveals mixed results.
In Rajasthan and Haryana, the party fared poorly in these seats. However, in western Uttar Pradesh, where the BJP had an alliance with the RLD, its performance was slightly better.
After a clean sweep in Rajasthan and Haryana in 2019, the BJP lost 11 of 25 seats in Rajasthan and five of 10 seats in Haryana.
In Rajasthan, the BJP lost all four seats in the Shekhawati region — Jhunjhunu, Churu, Sikar and Nagaur — where Jat votes are decisive.
In all these seats, Jat leaders from the INDIA bloc emerged as winners — Brijendra Singh Ola of the Congress from Jhunjhunu, Rahul Kaswan of the Congress from Churu, Amra Ram of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) from Sikar, and Hanuman Beniwal of the Rashtriya Loktantrik Party from Nagaur.
Among the other constituencies where Jat voters are present in sizeable numbers, Barmer picked Ummeda Ram Beniwal, Ganganagar (SC) chose Kuldeep Indora, Bharatpur (SC) picked Sanjna Jatav and Karauli-Dholpur (SC) chose Bhajanlal Jatav. All four winners are with the Congress.
Among the prominent BJP leaders from the Jat community who lost the elections in Rajasthan are Paralympian and Padma Shri awardee Devendra Jhajharia from Churu, Shubhkaran Choudhary from Jhunjhunu, Jyoti Mirdha from Nagaur, and Sumedhanand Saraswati from Sikar.
In Haryana, the Congress defeated BJP candidates in five seats, four of which — Rohtak, Sonipat, Hisar and Sirsa — either fall in the Jat heartland or have Jats in the majority in at least half their assembly segments.
In both Rajasthan and Haryana, the Scheduled Caste (SC) community also seems to have teamed up with the Jats.
The BJP lost the two reserved SC seats in Haryana while in Rajasthan, three of the four reserved SC constituencies (Ganganagar, Bharatpur and Karauli-Dholpur) went to the Congress and one (Bikaner) went to the BJP.
Of the three constituencies reserved for Scheduled Tribes (STs) in Rajasthan, only Udaipur went to the BJP while the Congress won Dausa and the Bharat Adivasi Party won Banswara.
In Uttar Pradesh, where the BJP’s tally has come down to 33 Lok Sabha seats from 62 in 2019, the party lost Kairina, Muzaffarnagar and Bijnor, all with sizeable Jat populations.
Dularam Saharan, political analyst, author and former chairman of the Rajasthan Sahitya Akademi, told ThePrint that the reason behind the anger of the Jats, or more appropriately farmers, towards the BJP was the kind of treatment they were getting under the Modi government.
“When Atal Bihari Vajpayee headed the NDA government in 1999, he came to Sikar and announced the OBC quota for Jats. Since then, the community has always voted for the BJP. However, this election was different. The Jats expressed their angst against the BJP through their votes because of the indifference of the Modi government towards them,” he said.
“After the Rajasthan assembly elections in 2023, the BJP has targeted the community by transferring Jat employees in the government to far-off places.”
In February this year, Krishna Poonia, Olympian and former Congress MLA from Sadulpur under Churu parliamentary constituency, posted on X a list of Jat officials transferred out of Taranagar.
Saharan said: “This happened days after Narendra Budania, a Jat Congress leader, defeated the BJP’s Rajendra Rathore, a former Leader of the Opposition, from the Taranagar assembly seat in the polls held in November 2023.”
‘Shabby treatment, divisive politics’
Alleging that discrimination against the Jats had become common in Rajasthan, Saharan said that ever since the Modi government had come up with the three controversial farm laws, which had to be repealed in the face of protests by farmers, the BJP had a “dislike for the farming community”, the majority of whom are from Jat Sikh and Jat backgrounds.
“This BJP is different from the BJP of the Vajpayee era. Vajpayee was a grounded leader. He used to interact with people at the grassroots level. When one is sent from the top and starts getting success after success, one doesn’t like any dissent. This is what is happening to Jats, or more precisely to the farmers in our country,” said Saharan.
He added that if the Jats had gone against the BJP now, the party also didn’t trust them anymore and wasn’t even making efforts to placate the community.
Ahead of the parliamentary polls, the BJP replaced its Jat party chiefs in Rajasthan and Haryana — Satish Poonia and O.P. Dhankar, respectively — with non-Jats. Also, Raje, who wielded clout among Jats because of her marriage into a Jat royal family, was not named Rajasthan CM despite her strong claim.
Yashpal Malik, a Jat leader from western Uttar Pradesh who heads the Akhil Bhartiya Jat Aarakshan Sangharsh Samiti, told ThePrint that the main reason Jats in Rajasthan, western Uttar Pradesh and Haryana were unhappy with the Modi government was the “shabby treatment” meted out to the agitating farmers in 2020-21, and then the government’s apathy to protests by women wrestlers who wanted justice for alleged sexual harassment by a BJP MP.
The Agnipath scheme launched by the Modi government for recruitment to the armed forced has also angered the Jats, he said.
“A large number of Jat youths from Rajasthan, Haryana and western UP used to join the armed forces. With the launch of the Agnipath scheme where three-fourths of recruits are retired after four years, very few youths opt for the armed forces as a career option now. It has taken away a major employment opportunity for Jat youths,” Malik added.
According to Malik, the BJP’s government’s policy towards Jats in Haryana was different from what it was in other states.
He alleged that the “type of divisive politics the BJP practised on religious lines between Hindus and Muslims in other parts of the country, the party was doing on caste lines between Jats and non-Jats in Haryana”.
“In Haryana, Muslims are concentrated in a smaller part and they impact the BJP in just three of 90 assembly seats. If the party plays the Hindu-Muslim card here, it won’t help it in the majority of seats. By playing the Jat-non-Jat card, the BJP wants to isolate the Jat community and corner the votes of other castes,” said Malik.
“It worked well for the party in the 2019 assembly and parliamentary elections. But when Dalits, particularly Ravidasias, also went against the BJP due to threats of changes to the Constitution, the party’s calculations failed,” he explained.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
Also Read: BJP’s ‘all is well’ in the national executive is ignoring key party problems