Within 48 hours of announcing his wish to return to the Congress, Rajasthan’s Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) searched three properties linked to former Congress MLA and Cabinet Minister Mahendra Jeet Singh Malviya in Banswara on Tuesday.Two days earlier, Malviya had announced his desire to return to the Congress fold, almost two years after he left the party and joined the BJP ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. After meeting the Congress’s Rajasthan in charge Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa and state president Govind Singh Dotasra, Malviya on Sunday said he had made up his mind to return to the Opposition party and that his supporters want the same.AdvertisementWhile properties linked to various senior Congress leaders in Rajasthan have been searched in the past, and some, such as Mahesh Joshi, have been arrested, and others, such as Ashok Gehlot’s former OSD Lokesh Sharma, have been interrogated for long hours, the action against Malviya appears unusual because of its timing and that a state agency carried it out. A majority of such actions against Congress leaders, which the Opposition party alleges is a vendetta, have been carried out by central agencies in the past.With the Congress yet to take a final call on Malviya’s return, the move may be interpreted as the BJP’s attempt to make the former minister reconsider his decision.Read | Rajasthan BJP leader Mahendrajeet Malviya, who signalled return to Congress, raided by Anti-Corruption BureauSome Congress leaders also wondered whether there was more to the story than meets the eye and if the searches were conducted to hasten Malviya’s return to the Congress. Quoting Gehlot’s oft-repeated statement, a Congress leader said, “Rajneeti mein aksar jo dikhata hai woh hota nahin, aur jo hota hai wo dikhta nahi (In politics, what you often see isn’t what really happens, and what really happens often isn’t seen).”AdvertisementAt the time he left Congress in February 2024, Malviya was a sitting MLA and also a member of the Congress Working Committee (CWC).Days before joining the BJP, he indicated that he was unhappy about being overlooked for the Leader of Opposition post. “In 2013, I was among the names for the CLP (leader). (And after the 2018 win) I was not made a minister for three years. Now again my name was for the CLP (leader). Congress, in a way, has been limited to some people. The vision Congress had for the nation and the people earlier, it is not there anymore,” he said at the time.Importance of Mahendra Jeet Singh MalviyaMalviya was one of Congress’s tallest leaders from the Mewar–Vagad region, having been elevated to the CWC in 2023. He was elected the Congress’s Lok Sabha MP from Banswara in 1998 and at the time of his resignation, he was in his fourth consecutive term as the Congress MLA from Bagidora, after being first elected from there in 2008. Even in 2013, when Congress had its worst-ever performance in the state and was restricted to just 21 seats, Malviya managed to retain his constituency.Between 2008 and 2013, he held various portfolios — for various durations — in the Gehlot government, including Rural Development, Tribal Area Development, and Technical Education.After the Congress formed a government in 2018, Malviya was overlooked for a ministerial post. During the 2020 political crisis, his name cropped up in an FIR lodged with the Special Operations Group (SOG) of the Rajasthan Police after people in audio clips were heard saying that he was with Pilot but had changed sides. Malviya had responded saying that he has been with Gehlot for the past three decades.Months after the rebellion, in January 2021, Malviya was announced as state vice president of the party. Later that year, in November, he was made a Cabinet Minister and given the charge of Water Resources, the Indira Gandhi Nahar Pariyojana (IGNP), and the Water Resource Planning Department. In August 2023, he replaced another Scheduled Tribe leader from the region, Raghuveer Meena, in the CWC.After joining the BJP, Malviya contested from Banswara as its Lok Sabha candidate but lost to the Bharat Adivasi Party’s (BAP) Raj Kumar Roat, who won by 2.47 lakh votes. The Congress had officially backed the BAP, but its candidate, Arvind Damor, refused to pull out of the contest, polling just 61,211 votes.Later, the BAP won the bypoll from Malviya’s traditional Bagidora Assembly seat in June 2024 as well, continuing the BJP’s 44-year-old dry run in the constituency; Bagidora has never had a BJP MLA. The BAP’s Jaikrishn Patel won by a margin of 51,434 votes.The Bagidora Assembly seat is part of the Mewar–Vagad region in south Rajasthan. The BJP is considered to be stronger in this region, which has a concentration of tribals. Of the state’s 25 ST reserved seats, 16 come from the region’s seven districts.Of the total 35 seats in these districts, the BJP holds 23, the Congress has six, while the BAP has four, and Independents have two.Even when the BJP was not in power before the 2023 Assembly polls, it held a majority of seats in the region. In the 2023 Assembly elections, of these seven districts, while it drew a blank in Bhilwara, Chittorgarh, Pratapgarh and Rajsamand, the Congress was the strongest in Banswara, thanks in part to Malviya, where it held four out of five seats. With Malviya’s exit, the party had diminished in the region.With the BAP’s growing influence among large sections of tribals in the region, the BJP had hoped to check its rise through Malviya. Now, with Malviya’s planned return to the Congress, the party may have to look at other strategies.