For the second day in a row, the agitation for reservation derailed BJP state president Vasundhara Raje’s Parivartan Yatra, indicating that the ride into the future was going to be extremely bumpy.‘‘There is no question of stopping now,’’ says Devi Singh Bhatti, former BJP minister and president of the Social Justice Front, which is spearheading reservation rallies. ‘‘This is no longer in my control. We have been holding rallies and garnering support for three-and-a-half years now. Politicians have to respond sometime. We can’t keep conducting peaceful rallies,’’ he rued.As an appetiser of things to come, Front activists have hampered Raje’s progress. In Jaitaran, as Raje tried to forget the agitating crowds of Wednesday and make a fresh start, shrill sloganeering and demand for reservations shattered the calm again.Earlier, on Wednesday, sloganeering groups did not allow Raje to address meetings in Jalore and Pali districts. Demanding reservations for different castes, including Rajputs and Brahmins, agitating activists disrupted the scheduled meeting.An equally agitated Raje declared herself to be a kshatrani and after failing to reason with the crowd, stomped off the stage. Late into the evening, Raje said she would struggle to get economically backward people of all castes justice. Also, there was sharp criticism by the Brahmin reservation lobby, unhappy with the way BJP workers dealt with the activists, warning that the BJP would have to face dire consequences if it ignored these demands.Meanwhile, BJP spokesperson Kalicharan Saraf floated a conspiracy theory saying that the entire episode was the handiwork of the Ashok Gehlot government. He alleged that the disruptions at the Yatra meetings were carried out on Gehlot’s instructions. But a Congress rally was also disrupted recently by Gujjars demanding that they be moved from the SC to the ST list. A couple of days earlier, Congressman Narender Singh Bhatti was not allowed to go through with his inauguration ceremony in Osian.
