Significantly, Shekhawat does not seem to have helped his cause. "If they don't have onions, let them eat apples" just about sums up his advice to voters. This hasn't gone down too well with an electorate fed up with spiralling prices, the major issue in the 1998 assembly polls. The anti-incumbency factor, after eight years of BJP rule, is strong and Shekhawat's studied effort to make price rise a non-issue "nobody ever died from not eating onions" has not succeeded.