Caste factor reason behind Sisram Ola, Girija Vyas inclusion

The veteran Jat leader from Rajasthan, Sisram Ola who defied the advise to retire into the Raj Bhavan finally grabbed a Cabinet berth in the latest rejig of the Union Cabinet on Monday.

The decision to include the 85-year-old from Jat heartland Jhunjhunu in the cabinet is viewed as more of a political compulsion for the Congress. The assembly election is due in Rajasthan by the end of this year.

The Jat community constitutes sizeable 13 % of the electorate in Rajasthan and the unceremonious exit of Jat leaders like Mahipal Maderna and Malkhan Singh following the alleged abduction and killing of ANM Bhanwari Devi had created heartburn in the Jat community.

The BJP has been wooing the Jats blaming the chief minister of implicating these leaders to settle political scores. There were also talks of some of these leaders may jump into the BJP bandwagon before the elections to teach Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot a lesson. Another Congress leader who found a Cabinet berth is  Girija Vyas.

She is considered as a replacement to C P Joshi who was deputed for party work. Both are Brahmins who belong to Mewar region (exactly the same place of Nathdwara in Udaipur) and were colleagues in the Mohanlal Sukhadia University. But politically both were in the opposite camps.

While Joshi was a Gehlot acolyte and dabbled in state politics , Vyas was considered in the opposite camp including Sisram Ola and was in national politics.

But it was by sheer bad luck that she missed a ministerial birth at the centre to Joshi.
Joshi who was the president of the Pradesh Congress committee was defeated by just a single vote in the last assembly from Nathdwara. There was sympathy for Joshi who brought the Congress back to power but lost out by a vote who was also a strong contender for the post of chief minister.

The party then contested him from the parliamentary seat from Bhilwara and he came out victorious with a land slide margin.