Jaipur: The city’s civic poll results have delivered a blunt message to both BJP and Congress: voters were not persuaded by candidate selection based primarily on religious arithmetic.For the first time, BJP fielded eight Muslim candidates in Jaipur Municipal Corporation elections, aiming to break into Muslim-dominated wards after delimitation altered boundaries of several of these. While in one ward – ward 146 – the BJP candidate did not file a nomination, in the remaining seven the saffron party candidates lost.Congress, attempting a reverse strategy, nominated Hindu candidates in wards traditionally seen as Muslim strongholds, citing changed demographics after redrawing of ward limits. That experiment also failed, with only one of its three Hindu nominees in the Kishanpole assembly area winning. Across the five reorganised wards, Congress managed just one victory.The outcome has triggered introspection in both camps. Party workers and leaders concede that voters appeared unwilling to reward symbolic social engineering unless backed by local credibility, organisation and issue-based outreach.BJP nominated Muslim candidates in wards 136 and 137 in the Hawa Mahal Zone; wards 109 and 113 in Kishanpole; wards 117 and 128 in Adarsh Nagar; and ward 19 in Vidhyadhar Nagar. Most of these areas were earlier part of the now defunct JMC Heritage, where minority voters remained influential despite delimitation.Malviya Nagar MLA and former Rajasthan health minister Kalicharan Saraf defended the BJP decision but admitted that the result carried a clear signal. “We tried to do an experiment by fielding Muslim candidates from Muslim-majority areas. But Muslim voters have sent us a message that they are with Congress and not with BJP. Their mandate was clear as none of our eight Muslim candidates could win,” Saraf said.Congress faced its own setback in the reshaped Kishanpole area. Wards 60 to 65 of the erstwhile JMC Heritage were reorganised into wards 105 to 109. Congress argued that BJP-led delimitation diluted Muslim-majority clusters, forcing it to field Hindu candidates where the new social mix demanded it. The calculation did not hold.Rafik Khan, two-term Congress MLA from Jaipur, blamed delimitation and internal rebellion. “Delimitation is the main reason for us to lose the valuable Kishanpole seats. Second, there were problems in selecting candidates. Our party workers turned rebels and contested as independents,” Khan said, citing ward 109, won by a Congress rebel.
