Why Rajasthan and the Jats are indifferent to Dhankhar's resignation

Surprisingly—or perhaps not so surprisingly?—no tears are being shed in Rajasthan over the seemingly forced resignation of Jagdeep Dhankhar as the vice president of India.

Until last week, both the Speaker of the Lok Sabha and the chairman of the Rajya Sabha were from Rajasthan — unique in India’s parliamentary history. With the resignation of Dhankhar, only one of them is still in office. Yet, back their home state, there is not much sense of loss or outrage visible.

There is not much discernible anger even among the powerful Jat community, his own people.

There are 37 MLAs from the community in the Rajasthan assembly, 16 of whom had won on a BJP ticket and 18 as Congress candidates. Comprising 14–15 per cent of the state’s population, the Jats are believed to have the sheer numbers to sway election results in 45 of the 200 assembly constituencies. The community is also represented by 6 MPs in the Lok Sabha and 4 ministers in the BJP government in the state.

There is also no manifestation of outrage in either the BJP or the Congress camp.

Jats in both the camps, including former Congress chief minister Ashok Gehlot, do believe that Dhankhar was forced to resign. Even so, speculation over the reason has been muted. The chairman of the Ajmer Cooperative Dairy and a veteran Congress leader, Ram Chandra Choudhary does not mince his words.

“Dhankhar championed opportunism in politics,” he says, as explanation of the scant sympathy for Dhankhar in the state. The unspoken sentiment is that the VP had indeed become too big for his boots.

Dhankar's choice as VP a signal to both Rajasthan and Mamata Banerjee

Dhankhar, Choudhary points out, had shifted from the Janata Dal to the Congress before joining the BJP, where he had to wait for 21 long years before receiving any substantive post — until he became governor of West Bengal.

He won only two elections in his long political career, the first to the Lok Sabha as a Janata Dal candidate and later, as a Congress candidate, to the state assembly. In the 1998 election for the Lok Sabha from Jhunjhunu, he lost his deposit. He has, in fact, lost twice in Lok Sabha elections.

Dhankhar, Choudhary says, was never quite accepted as a leader of the Jat community. He could not attain the stature of such stalwarts as Nathuram Mirdha, Ram Niwas Mirdha, Chaudhary Kumbha Ram Arya, Parasram Maderna and Daulat Ram Saran. Even after being elected vice-president of India, he never quite received the same kind of respect these state leaders command, he adds.

State Congress president for the past five years Govind Singh Dotasra, though, feels that his caste was certainly a major consideration for the BJP appointing him first as a governor and then as the vice-president. The idea was to promote Jat representation and pride in Rajasthan, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh.

However, his utility began to diminish once the BJP realised that he no longer enjoyed the same standing in the community as before. The die was cast when the BJP lost the six Lok Sabha seats of Sikar, Jhunjhunu, Churu, Barmer and Nagaur seats — all Jat strongholds.

When Dhankhar began to act independently, it was the last straw, Dotasra adds.

Was vice-president Jagdeep Dhankhar asked to resign?

Days before he was forced to resign, the former vice-president was presiding over a function at Kota, the home turf of Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla. In the course of his address, he described the coaching institutes of Kota as “poaching” and not coaching institutes, raising eyebrows.

The economy of Kota thrives on the coaching institutes and the comment made many in the audience uncomfortable. It certainly would not have pleased the Lok Sabha Speaker.

Significantly, Dhankhar’s extended family members have diverse political loyalties. His elder brother’s son-in-law Rahul Kaswan, who was earlier an BJP MP from Churu, was denied the BJP ticket in the last Lok Sabha election and contested on a Congress ticket — and won. His father Ram Singh Kaswan was two-time BJP MP from Churu and his mother was also a BJP MLA in Rajasthan.

Dhankhar’s younger brother Randeep Dhankhar was made chairman of the Rajasthan Tourism Development Corporation by the Congress government and his daughter is one of the information commissioners appointed by the earlier Congress government in the state.

“Dhankhar-ji is my brother-in-law and I have learned a lot from him both as a person and as a lawyer. All I can say is Dhankhar-ji never acted under any pressure and was always guided by his conscience, and as an expert of Constitutional laws, he acted with utmost honesty as the Chairman of Rajya Sabha,” says Praveen Baldawa, a lawyer and a loyalist.

While the political career of Jagdeep Dhankhar does appear to have ended, as a lawyer, he may continue to handle arbitration cases — though he is unlikely to return as a lawyer to the Supreme Court. People close to him say that the 74-year-old former VP, who is entitled to a monthly pension, government accommodation and staff, is likely to continue living in New Delhi, alternating between his large farmhouse in Jaipur and the national capital.