The Olympian and the Princess: Jaipur Showdown for Royal Rivalry

On Monday, when the nation was still following up on the election dates announced for 5 states, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) quietly slipped in the first list of its candidates for the upcoming assembly elections in Rajasthan. 41 candidates were on that short-list, but 2 of them became the talking point in living rooms and the newsrooms in the state. Diya Kumari and Rajyavardhan Rathore. 

Their story is the tale of two cities within Jaipur. Two portraits of ambition. One, of an aspirational commoner who breaks through the ranks of life and army to live a ruler’s dream, the other of a demure princess who steps out of her coiffured lifestyle to win people’s hearts in a brutal Game of Thrones.  

The two began their political journey around the same time. Their tracks ran parallel, for some time. Like two universes, each swirling next to the other on its own axis. As Rajputs, they came from the same community. They ended up joining the same party. Both are sitting parliamentarians from the BJP stable. In 10 years, the two would end up walking the path to politics and winding up in each other’s backyard. 

Diya Kumari is now the contestant from the assembly constituency of Vidhyadhar Nagar. Rajyvardhan Rathore is the MLA aspirant next door, from the constituency of Jhotwara. The only proximity between the two aspirants is of the constituencies they have been assigned. Their universes have collided and drifted far apart. The once friendly acquaintance now lilies buried under the veneer of a cordial distrust.   

The Olympian and the Princess 

In 2013 the BJP, scouting for fresh Rajput faces, approached them both. Diya was the Princess of Jaipur. The closest she had come to politics was her father and then Maharaja of Jaipur, Sawai Bhawani Singh, contesting the Jaipur MP seat on a Congress ticket. That was 1989. He lost to BJP’s Girdhari Lal Bhargava who would remain undefeated for a 6 consecutive terms. 

Rathore was an army man before he was widely recognised as an Olympian. He opted for retirement from service in 2013 and joined the BJP. Like Diya, he was a political greenhorn. His father had worn the uniform too. He came from a family of decorated servicemen. Diya joined the party in a show-stopping rally in Jaipur with Narendra Modi, then Gujarat CM, and Vasundhara Raje, the then state president of the BJP, in Rajasthan. Everything was about to change over the next 6 months. 

In December 2013. Diya won the polls from Sawai Madhopur in a surprise victory over Meena stalwart Kirori Lal who had defected from the party and contested as an Independent. She was a legislator now reporting to Raje, who was elected the chief minister in one of the most thunderous and one-sided victories the state had ever seen. A few months later, the Olympian took his shot at a career in politics by contesting the Jaipur Rural parliamentary constituency in the 2014 general elections. He won! That was the historic year in which Narendra Modi was catapulted to the national stage with his trailblazing win as the prime ministerial candidate of the BJP. Rathore rode on the back of that race horse.

Both delivered on the promise of their brand. The Olympian and the Princess had arrived. 

The royal face-off 

Halfway through the chief ministerial tenure of Vasundhara Raje’s, the estrangement with Diya Kumari was no longer a muffled whisper in power corridors. In the autumn of 2016, the Jaipur Development Authority, had brazenly sealed the gates of Rajmahal Palace Hotel, a royal property, in the heart of the city. Diya Kumari had famously stood in front of the JDA bulldozers preventing them from demolishing any construction on the said land. The gloves were off and so was the mask. A BJP government set out to demolish a BJP legislator’s hotel in the state capital only tore through the last vestige of trust between the two. Curiously, the chief minister was not in town when the babus were making a move on the royal family of Jaipur.

The incident got Diya Kumari rethinking her career path. She is believed to have sought counsel from the then defence minister, Rajnath Singh, in this incident’s aftermath. After all, he was the one who had eased her into the idea of joining politics. During this time, the legislator from Rajasthan was lobbying with the Delhi leadership. Multiple meetings with the BJP brass ensued over the course of the next 18 months as Diya Kumari went about plotting her career anew. Back home, Raje was kept busy by the BJP’s central leadership. Even with a brutal strength of 163 legislators in a House of 200, she was fighting off a possible coup.

Barely a few months after the much public confrontation, her career rival and fellow Rajput politician, Rajyavardhan was inducted into the cabinet of the Modi government at Centre. He was now the Information and Broadcasting minister. Diya was just another legislator of the 200 elected to the Rajasthan assembly. 

His rise was meteoric. It was Advantage Rathore.   

Rivalry over Rajsamand 

“She was upset with the MP (Rajyavardhan) for keeping one foot in Jaipur rural and the other in Rajsamand,” a Diya Kumari aide spoke of the predicament that kept her on the tenterhooks for days leading up to the general elections in 2019. 

It was an anxious time for Diya Kumari. When the state elections came around in 2018, she was curiously missing from the action. She was dropped as a candidate in Sawai Madhopur, despite being a sitting legislator. Her name was not there on the subsequent list of candidates announced. With Raje calling the shots in ticket distribution, the die-hard CM loyalists had started to write her political epitaph. 

When asked if she was upset with her name missing from the candidature, she told reporters, “It was my decision to not contest the assembly polls.” But she would make it a point to toe the party line and take up any responsibility including that of a possible stint in parliament. 

Most missed the woods for the trees in the cascading sequence of a nervous few weeks. Diya Kumari had meticulously and swiftly changed her tracks over the preceding two years after her fallout with the chief minister. Raje lost to Gehlot in 2018. Diya Kumari’s aides were thanking her stars. They still had another shot at power. She had not exhausted her cards. The time to play her hand was near. 

While Diya Kumari was without any constituency, Rajyavardhan Rathore was reportedly mulling whether to contest from Jaipur Rural again. There were ground reports suggesting he was on a tough wicket in his constituency. The other option, was Rajsamand. While Rajyavardhan and company were calculating the possibilities on both parliamentary seats, Diya Kumari was getting restless over the party’s indecision. At that time, Rajyavardhan had stepped into the polling arena as a Union minister. “She had originally wanted to contest Jaipur Rural but had settled for Rajsamand long before other claimants to the seat came up,” a party official said. But with Rajyavardhan eyeing Rajsamand, she was naturally anxious.

When the final list for the 25 parliamentary seats in Rajasthan was announced in 2019, the list read – Jaipur Rural: Rajyavardhan Rathore. Rajsamand: Diya Kumari.  

There was nothing to lose, for both. And, everything to win. It was a Deuce.  

The CM candidate and a legislator 

On a sultry summer day, an elected office bearer from Ajmer zipped past the border speeding into the neighbouring district of Rajsamand. A band of anxious men were in tow. “You can come over. She is here,” a voice on the other end of the phone had snapped them out of their everyday bonhomie. The cold call was dead within seconds. He received word about the Member of Parliament (MP) Diya Kumari visiting her constituency. The matter was as pressing to them as was the availability of the parliamentarian. “Hum Congress se hain na (We are from the Congress party no!),” the person at the centre of this story told WB. 

Their first stop was at the residence of a local village Pradhan. The hefty guy was from the BJP. He was to introduce the visitors to the MP. The elected official from Ajmer was carrying with him a case of a civic issue that residents of both districts were facing on a daily basis. An arterial road passing through Rajsamand was choked by traffic. The locals were miserable in the evenings. “The problem was a 5-km stretch. “It was a nightmare driving through it on weekends because of an influx of tourist vehicles with that of the locals,” he spoke of the dilemma. As a Rajput, he was hoping to convey the message better to the Rajsamand MP who is from the same community. That day the public representatives were about to discover Diya Kumari. 

in Jaipur, both politicians are viewed differently by the Rajput voters. “Diya Kumari is royalty. The community has a natural affinity toward her. Plus, she has risen in stature and has made herself approachable unlike other royal families who still fancy themselves as the ruling class,” Sudarshan Singh Rathore, a Jaipur-based businessman said. Rajyavardhan has his charm as a youth leader and all. But when it comes to both leaders, his entire machinery has a regimented feel, like that of an army. “His wife Gayatri Rathore plays a huge role on and off the field in managing his political affairs,” a person in the know of the matter said. “In public dealings, Rajyavardhan is measured and scripted. Diya Kumari is more unplugged. She has a method and purpose but she is spontaneous when in public,” Sudarshan said. 

The jubilation in the BJP camp over the second innings of Modi as PM was not music to Rajyavardhan Rathore. He was dropped from the Union ministry in Modi’s ongoing tenure. The blue-eyed boy would remain a party MP having won his seat again. Rathore has since been idling as the Jaipur MP.

Monday’s announcement brings him back to the political arena just like his arch-rival Diya Kumari. However, there is a catch. Vidhyadhar Nagar, which Diya is contesting, is a seat with a predominant Rajput population. Jhotwara’s electoral make-up is different. “A part of the rural area of Jaipur with a sizable Jat population falls within Jhotwara,” a Congress worker with the sitting legislator Lal Chand Kataria said. That’s just half the headache for Rajyavardhan.

If BJP insiders are to be believed, Rajyavardhan faces a twin challenge in the constituency. “The former MLA, Rajpal Singh Shekhawat, who has been dropped to accommodate Rathore, has already communicated his displeasure to Raje the same night,” a BJP leader from Jaipur said. His supporters have even tried meeting the former chief minister who has herself fallen out of favour with the BJP brass led by JP Nadda and Narendra Modi. Rajyavardhan will be fighting off the sitting Congress legislator, Kataraia, and Rajpal Singh whose entire legion of workers were all waiting for the go-ahead to launch themselves into the polls. Not any more.

Ten years is a long time for a political career. Diya Kumari was last seen conducting the mega rally in Jaipur attended by prime minister Narendra Modi recently. Her prominence within the party has got the party hierarchy talking of her as a candidate for chief minister. She has survived an impossible debut, a political heavyweight in Raje, and a dropout scare. At the peak of his career, Rajyavardhan went on to serve as a union cabinet minister at par with that of Sachin Pilot and Jyotiraditya Scindia. He has served as an MP and has now been fielded as a legislator. Their careers have come full circle. Diya has risen to rival Raje as a possible CM candidate. And, not without merit.

In the hurriedly arranged meeting in Rajsamand that summer noon, the public representative from Ajmer found himself in the company of Diya Kumari. “She asked us to be seated while excusing the Pradhan who had ushered us in. She told him a middleman was not needed. “Ye meri boli samajhte hain. Aur main inki. Hai na? (I understand their language. And, they mine. Right?) You can spare yourself the mediation,” she told the Pradhan. After the meeting, the band of Ajmer and Rajsamand representatives walked out a surprised and content lot. Diya Kumari had signed off on a road widening project running into crores on the spot after enquiry with the local police and administration revealed the problem was genuine. It was an impromptu meeting. No political heavyweight sought any favour. It did not matter which party members brought up the matter. She was spontaneously decisive and clear in her decision-making. Just the way she was when switching lanes in the middle of her first tenure as a legislator.