Meet brothers who’re about to do a reluctant Bharat Act

Whoever said blood is thicker than water surely had no appetite for politics. Power is such a rush that can put a thinner to shame in corroding and successfully erasing any good in a relation.

In Rajasthan, two leaders of Meena community are locked in a Catch-22 situation with their brothers becoming ambitious or party favourites to contest the Parliamentary polls.

Sooner, than later, it would be amply clear that Dausa MP Kirori Lal Meena’s brother Jagmohan Meena would be taking the plunge in politics having filed for voluntary retirement to contest the Parliamentary polls against another government servant, ex-DGP Harish Chandra Meena, who like him, happily walked out of active service to rule than serve.    

In both cases, their brothers who are also the sitting MPs would be making way for them, passing on the baton to the second-in-command. But far from doing it out of gratitude for the thicker variant of the fluid throbbing in their veins, their generosity betrays a political compulsion of which there is no immediate escape.  

In Ramayana, prince Bharat hands over the throne of Ayodhya to his elder brother Ram who after completing the exile, returns home to reclaim his rightful legacy. In Dausa, the stage is set for the Bharat Act to be reprised. Only this time, the Ram is readying to hand over the kingdom to Bharat, quite reluctantly, as the political forces combined are making it hard for him to kick the heels in for another term, as sitting MP from Sawai Madhopur, Namo Narayan Meena, has realised to his own discomfiture.

His younger brother Harish Chandra Meena is a classic case. He has been itching to join the ranks of Men in White even when he has been wearing the Khaki. A fitness freak and a police officer, he found his surname working to his advantage when Ashok Gehlot took charge as chief minister. To balance the power, Gehlot played his usual caste card. He made Dr Jeetendra Singh (a Gurjar) the energy minister, got Kushal Singh, a Jat bureaucrat, to hop above her seniors to become the first woman chief secretary and finally, Meena as the director general of police.        

Meena has been, in his last days as a public servant, accused of playing to the masses and pumping up his image of a neta, when he ‘toured’ some areas in eastern belt on the pretext of bolstering the image of police in public. He was always tipped to throw his hat in the election ring, the only question being: When?

The when came in due course; he walked into the BJP, but it threw up another question: Why? In natural course of things he would have followed into the footsteps of his elder brother Namo Narayan Meena to the Congress camp, but it was not. For those wondering Harish Meena’s induction in BJP to be swift, it was on for some months and chief minister Vasundhara Raje timed the stroke to perfection.    

In one single stroke, Meena got the plank he was so desperately looking to propel himself as a neta and yanked his elder brother’s chain who was trying for a hat-trick by contesting a third straight term from Sawai-Madhopur. The door was closed on former MoS finance in Manmohan Singh government since Congress had already given his seat on a platter to seat-swapper Azharuddin and the odds are against Congress betting on a brother versus brother fight on same seat. Harish Meena, the politician had arrived.

His likely opponent, sitting Dausa MP Kirori Lal Meena’s younger brother Jagmohan Meena, has a different equation with his maverick brother and tribal leader Kirori Lal Meena. Jagmohan, an RAS officer, last posted as additional commissioner in settlement training school, has neither been politically inclined, nor groomed. As a bureaucrat too he has largely been serving departments that have little to do with public dealing and more with cooling one’s heels. He however, becomes the only escape plan for Kirori Lal Meena who stands, career-wise and in terms of allies, marginalised after the total annihilation of his party in the Assembly poll massacre at the hands of BJP.

It is no secret that all of Meena’s ploys have been targetted at hurting Raje’s political prospects than bolstering his own fortunes. Since his separation from the BJP, he has been looking to convert even the slightest opening into an opportunity to frame Raje, catch her napping.

His contesting the polls in 2008, 2009 (general elections) and 2013 polls and floating of the NPP party with PA Sangma, who incidentally has aligned with the BJP, was aimed at Raje’s downfall. He succeeded to some extent in 2008, but Raje got the better of him in the December Assembly polls. However cold Kirori’s plan of revenge is, it has an undeniable warm undercurrent to it. Even in the leanest of phases, Kirori, despite his acerbic rants against the BJP, never turned to another party. He, therefore, is averse to contesting on Congress ticket as MP from Dausa.

In Jagmohan, he sees a chance to hold the Dausa seat, a political ploy, which allows him to have the cake and eat it too. One of his aides insists he wants to remain in the Assembly and keep training guns at Raje, his favourite pastime. Jagmohan seems to fit the bill. For the same reason Kirori warned a reporter of this daily he would rather not field anyone in Dausa if Jagmohan is not given a ticket. The Congress seems to have heard him.