Jaipur. Despite losing 11 seats in Rajasthan in the Lok Sabha elections, the top leadership of BJP has maintained its trust in Rajasthan. Rajasthan’s ministerial quota and the post of Lok Sabha Speaker remained intact in PM Narendra Modi’s third term. This has kept the party’s Rajasthan unit in high spirits. Four MPs from Rajasthan have been made ministers in PM Modi 3.0 government. The trust in Rajasthan has been maintained by repeating Kota MP Om Birla on the post of Lok Sabha Speaker.
Om Birla has made a hat-trick by winning the election from Kota-Bundi Lok Sabha constituency for the third consecutive time. Om Birla has previously been an MLA from Kota South for three consecutive times. He is a big face of BJP from the Vaishya community not only in Rajasthan but in the country as well. Earlier, there were speculations about Om Birla being included in the cabinet this time. But when he was not included in the cabinet and four MPs from Rajasthan were made ministers like last time, Rajasthan’s hopes of Birla being made the Speaker of the Lok Sabha again were revived.
This time BJP’s winning streak stopped at 14 seats only
Rajasthan had done a clean sweep by winning all 25 seats of Rajasthan in the year 2014 and 2019. This time BJP had claimed to make a hat-trick of clean sweep. It had entered the election fray with Mission-25. But its dream could not be fulfilled. Congress and Indi alliance stopped BJP’s victory chariot on only 14 seats. This gave a big blow to BJP. After that it was expected that this time fewer ministers would be made from Rajasthan. But BJP’s top leadership and PM Modi did not do so.
The status of ministers was also retained
This time too, BJP proved these speculations wrong by making its three old ministers Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Bhupendra Yadav and Arjun Ram Meghwal along with Bhagirath Chaudhary as ministers. Not only this, PM Narendra Modi also kept the status of ministers intact as before. There was no change in that too. Shekhawat and Yadav were cabinet ministers earlier too. They are cabinet ministers this time too. Arjun Ram Meghwal was also a minister of state with independent charge earlier. He is this time too. Former Union Minister of State Kailash Chaudhary lost the election, so Ajmer MP Bhagirath Chaudhary has been made a minister of state in his place.
FIRST PUBLISHED : June 27, 2024, 14:41 IST