New Delhi: As the BJP-led government in Rajasthan prepares to mark its first anniversary in power this month, it has to contend with the troublesome matter of Kirodi Lal Meena—its senior tribal leader who is the state’s agriculture minister, but only in name.
Meena, 73, resigned from the Rajasthan cabinet in early June this year, soon after the BJP’s dismal performance in the general elections and in the state, where it got reduced from 25 seats to 14. His resignation, which he submitted saying he could not fulfil his promise of victory in east Rajasthan made to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has till now not been accepted.
Since putting in his papers, Meena has not attended office, nor used his official car and residence. Chief Minister Bhajan Lal Sharma as well as the party high command in Delhi have also not been able to persuade him to work as agriculture minister on the ground, and he has skipped all cabinet meetings except one held in September, according to sources in the BJP.
Meena has rather been working more as a whistleblower within the Rajasthan government, raking up one issue after another. Compounding the imbroglio, his brother Jagmohan Meena lost last month’s bypoll in their stronghold of Dausa.
Speaking to ThePrint, a Rajasthan BJP functionary said that the high command had tried to address one concern of Meena by fielding his brother from Dausa.
“Jagmohan Meena was a ticket claimant in the Rajasthan assembly election (last year) and the Lok Sabha polls too but he was denied it. So now, the party thought that giving a ticket to Jagmohan would help placate Meena and pave the way for his return to the cabinet,” he said.
“Meena camped in villages to ensure his brother’s victory as his prestige was at stake. Had Jagmohan won, Meena could have been forced to take back his resignation but it did not happen. Now, the situation has become very strange. Meena had first resigned claiming he could not fulfil his promise to the PM and now he has lost face again in Dausa, though the party knows he campaigned hard,” the functionary added.
He also asserted that “if pushed, Meena has the power to expose anybody, so everybody respects him and tries not to annoy him”.
Since June, Meena has attended one September cabinet meeting when newly appointed Rajasthan BJP president Madan Rathore requested him to attend, as the cabinet was scheduled to discuss cancellation of the 2021 sub-inspector recruitment exam, an issue which Meena has pressed for, according to BJP sources.
A few days ago, the state cabinet approved an anti-conversion bill but Meena did not attend the meeting. Further, CM Sharma is holding meetings of the agriculture department, the sources said.
Defending Meena, his brother Jagmohan, a retired Rajasthan Administrative Service officer, asserted that he was “working as minister by addressing people’s problems”.
“I am going village-by-village to know the reason behind my defeat; prima facie it looks like sabotage by own men to dent Kirodi Lal Meena’s prestige. As far as Meena’s ministerial duty is concerned, he is working by addressing people’s problems,” he told ThePrint.
BJP sources did accept that a few party leaders did not campaign for Jagmohan in Dausa and that “many in the party calculated that a loss will diminish the capital of Meena further”.
D.D. Bairwa of the Congress, who won the Dausa seat, told ThePrint that “now influence of Kirodi Lal Meena has diminished in eastern Rajasthan and his political career is on the wane”.
Speaking to ThePrint, Meena himself denied that he was working against the BJP-led government in Rajasthan. “Whether I remain a minister or not, I have never attacked anyone from behind. I have always fought the war as Maharana Pratap. I am only highlighting what I am hearing,” he said.
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‘Pain in my heart’
Meena is crucial for the BJP as he comes from the Meena tribal community that is dominant in Rajasthan and is estimated to make up around 10 percent of the state population.
Resigning in early June, Meena claimed that the PM had given him charge of east Rajasthan Lok Sabha seats but his own people let him down. His resignation was not accepted by the CM.
According to state BJP sources, three weeks later, Meena met CM Sharma to press him to accept his resignation but Sharma refused. Meena then sent his resignation by mail and also disclosed at a religious event in June that he had resigned as agriculture minister.
BJP president J.P. Nadda called Meena to meet him in New Delhi to discuss the matter of his resignation. Nadda reportedly asked Meena to withdraw his resignation but he did not relent, saying that “he was not annoyed with any leader”.
“The people of my constituency have not supported me in the election and that is why I am resigning,” he said, adding that “he had no issue with the new CM or anybody else”.
A senior state BJP leader had earlier told ThePrint that Meena was expecting the top job as CM after the BJP’s victory in the state polls last year.
Meena has since early this year also led a crusade on one front or another, from writing to the CM to putting the state government on check on several issues.
In the last two weeks, he has put out posts on X in which he seems to accuse his party leaders of sabotage. “It would be better if you kill me, death doesn’t have that much power…I have always played with fire, in a village of embers. I grew up in the shade of poisonous hisses. So many thorns pricked me that my soles became pierced, but still my feet have the energy to walk,” he says in one in Hindi.
In another, he talks of the “pain in my heart”, “always being killed by my own people” and “suffering a lot in political life”.
“The brother who supported me throughout my life like a shadow, soothed my every pain… when the opportunity came to repay the loan, I could not repay the loan because of some Jaichands (betrayers). I have only one shortcoming, that I do not indulge in sycophancy…” he says.
“I am neither disappointed nor disheartened by the struggle of four-and-a-half decades. The defeat has certainly taught me a lesson, but I am not distraught. I am determined to continue on this path of struggle,” he writes.
Always a rebel
Meena is known as an independent-minded leader who had even quit the BJP in the past over differences with senior leader and former Rajasthan CM Vasundhara Raje.
This year, he has been busy bringing up cases of alleged government irregularities or raising people’s issues.
For instance, he demanded the recall of a housing project in Jaipur as it did not have cabinet clearance. In May, Meena wrote to the CM alleging “irregularities” in the implementation of the Jal Jeevan Mission in the state. It was another act seen in BJP circles as rebellion against the CM.
He has also continuously campaigned for cancellation of 2021 sub-inspector recruitment exam over allegations of paper leak.
In the last few months, Meena has started another controversy by claiming that he had personally highlighted to CM Sharma the alleged fraud in registrations at Rajasthan Medical Council (RMC)—where unqualified individuals managed to register themselves as doctors using fake documents.
Last month, Meena came out in support of Congress rebel Naresh Meena who was arrested for slapping a sub-divisional magistrate. He met Naresh in jail and visited villages with the state home minister to mollify people in the wake of violence between Naresh’s supporters and the Tonk police. The CM too, on Meena’s insistence, met a delegation of villagers and inquiries were ordered to placate angry members of the Meena community.
On Tuesday, Meena accused police officers of harassing student leaders who have been protesting against the SI recruitment exam.
He alleged to the media that a Jaipur policewoman had forcibly entered the houses of students, locked their rooms and harassed their families and landlords. He also posted a video on social media stating that the police officer concerned was “recruited on fake sports quota”.
Earlier, he raised the grievances of safai karamcharis and visited the state Anti-Corruption Bureau office to expedite probe in a few cases.
The Rajasthan BJP functionary mentioned earlier told ThePrint: “Without placating him, Meena is more dangerous to the government. He was virtually the opposition leader during the previous Congress-led government and made raids on firms, held fast on the paper-leak issue and pushed the government on several matters.”
“In Satish Poonia’s time as state BJP president, Meena ran a parallel party unit and grabbed more headlines. Since the BJP government’s formation, he has become another power centre; nobody can ignore him and he has become a whistleblower within the government.”
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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