Minister Sanwar Lal left academics to uplift village

JAIPUR: A two-time cabinet minister in Rajasthan'sVasundharaRaje-governments, professor SanwarLalJat (59), had never hoped to make it to Prime Minister NarendraModi's ministry. This was often cited as the reason why Jat was reluctant to vacate his Nasirabad assembly seat and contest the 2014 LokSabha election from Ajmer.
Chief minister Raje, however, had different political plans.For her, defeating Congress state president Sachin Pilot, who was then a union minister too, was more important. Pilot's defeat would dampen the already shattered opposition party in Rajasthan. The chief minister had done her groundwork; Pilot, who had turned around the fate of Ajmer as its representative and union minister in the 15^th Lok Sabha, could be defeated on caste calculations rather than any other criteria. Jat's community dominated Ajmer parliamentary constituency and, hence, suited Raje's plans.
Jat had a humble beginning, born as a hard-up peasant's son in village Gopalpura near Singawal under Ajmer's Bhinai tehsil. He received primary schooling at Singawal, but had to go to the nearby town of Gulabpura for secondary school and later to a still bigger town of Vijay Nagar for a college degree in commerce in 1975. Two years hence, he completed his M.Com from Ajmer. A PhD followed much later in Jaipur.
Jat began his career as a supervisor with the Ajmer dairy, but soon qualified as a lecturer with the Ajmer government college in 1978-79. He taught as lecturer at Baran and Sambhar colleges also, before joining the University of Rajasthan as an assistant professor on January 2, 1981.
Though Jat had been active in college politics at Vijay Nagar, he got a breakthrough in 1990 upon meeting the then union minister and Janata Dal general secretary Ajit Singh during the latter's Jaipur visit. Jat won Ajmer's Bhinai assembly seat for Janata Dal that year. JD, then an alliance partner of the ruling BJP in the state, however, disintegrated in a move orchestrated by the then chief minister Bhairon Singh Shekhawat after the arrest of L K Advani in Bihar for his Ram temple Rath Yatra. Jat, along with other JD MLAs like Rajendra Rathore moved over to BJP. In his next government from 1993 to 1998, Shekhawat rewarded Jat as minister of state with independent charge of relief and rehabilitation.
Raje made him a cabinet minister in her first government (2003 to 2008). Between 1990 and 2003, Jat won four successive assembly elections from Bhinai, before the constituency ceased to exist after the delimitation of 2008. He moved to the Gujjar-dominated Nasirabad constituency, but lost by a margin of 71 votes in 2008. In 2013, he finally wrested Nasirabad from Congress which had never lost the seat since 1952. Raje rewarded him with a cabinet post once again.
Sources said, as Jat relinquished the state's cabinet post to suit Raje's plans, she lobbied for him for a ministerial berth at the Centre. Modi confidant Om Mathur seconded his candidature, said sources.