The ruling Congress in Rajasthan suffered a jolt with the BJP beating it in panchayat elections, an outcome which the winning party on Wednesday called a “farmers’ mandate” amid protests against the Centre’s new agri-marketing laws.
The BJP bagged 1,989 of the 4,371 panchayat samiti seats while the Congress won 1852 with almost all results of the four-phase local Government polls being declared.
The CPI(M) bagged 26 seats, the RLP six and the Bahujan Samaj Party five. Independent candidates won 439 panchayat samiti seats.
At the zila parishad level, BJP candidates won 353 of the 635 seats for which results were declared and the Congress got 252.
Only one zila parishad seat result is yet to be announced in the election held across 21 of the State’s 33 districts.
The BJP candidates are now in majority in 13 of these district boards and the party is set to head one more with the help of ally Rashtriya Loktantrik Party (RLP). The Congress has won five of the remaining zila parishads.
The results come as a boost for the Bharatiya Janata Party when its Government at the Centre is facing protests — mainly from farmers in Punjab and Haryana — over the three new laws to deregulate the sale of crops.
On Twitter, BJP president JP Nadda called the Rajasthan success a symbol of trust farmers, labourers and the poor have in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership.
In Delhi, Union Minister Prakash Javadekar said the results indicate that crores of rural people are in favour of agriculture reforms. “This is a farmers’ mandate and a vote for farm reforms,” he said.
He said the results bucked a trend in Rajasthan where in the panchayat elections in 2010 and 2015, the party in power had won the rural government elections as well.