While addressing a rally at the launch of his party in October 2018, Rashtriya Loktantrik Party chief Hanuman Beniwal claimed his outfit would emerge as an alternative to the Congress and the BJP in Rajasthan. Results of Rajasthan’s assembly bypolls declared Saturday, however, showed that the party couldn’t even retain Khinwsar – the only seat that the party had won in the 2023 Rajasthan assembly election.

The outcome of the Rajasthan bypolls held on November 13 showed that RLP’s Kanika Beniwal, wife of the party chief, lost to BJP’s Rewant Ram Danga by 13,901 votes. Danga secured 1,08,628 votes against 94,727 of Kanika Beniwal. The Congress’s Ratan Chaudhary, meanwhile, came a distant third, with 5,454 votes.

The election was necessitated by sitting MLA Hanuman Beniwal’s election to the Lok Sabha earlier this year.

For the RLP, the loss is significant. Khinswar is seen as a Beniwal family citadel – while Hanuman won the seat four times – 2008, 2013, 2018 and 2023 – his brother Narayan secured it in 2019.

It also comes less than a year after Hanuman beat Danga by 2,059 votes in the 2023 Rajasthan assembly polls and only months after his election into Lok Sabha from Nagaur – the parliamentary constituency under which Khinswar falls.

For the RLP, the defeat also meant losing its only assembly seat, down from the three seats it had won in 2018, when it had first launched.

Significantly, Danga is an ex-RLP member and former close aide to Hanuman who joined the BJP just before the 2023 assembly election.

Despite his loss in the last polls, Danga, with the BJP machinery firmly behind him, emerged as a formidable opponent to Beniwal. Soon after the election results were announced, he claimed change was in the air.

“I’m glad that the BJP chose me as a candidate from Khinwsar. The public has given its decision and people should just accept it. The public of Khinwsar wanted change, which they will now get,” he told reporters.

Calls and text messages to Hanuman Beniwal went unanswered. However, addressing the media soon after the polls, the RLP chief said that regardless of the party’s loss, he was still MP from Nagaur. “For the next five years, my aim is to take action against the corrupt officials in the BJP or Congress party and will fight against the injustice,” he said.

Meanwhile, BJP leader Ashok Saini, who was the party’s election in-charge for Khinwsar, credited the victory to the party’s intense on-ground campaign.

“The BJP set up the election team for Khinwsar in June and from July, our work began. We made seven mandals in the assembly areas under different heads and held meetings with the public in villages and hamlets to understand their problems. As our government is in power, we did a lot of development work in the area and assured people that this will be the reality once the BJP is in power,” he said.