Congress drops Sunil Sharma's Jaipur candidature amid uproar, replaces with Pratap Singh Khachariyawas

Congress replaced Sunil Sharma with Pratap Singh Khachariyawas as the Jaipur Lok Sabha candidate.

Updated on: Mar 24, 2024, 22:02:02 IST

By HT News Desk

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The Congress on Sunday dropped party leader Sunil Sharma as its Lok Sabha election candidate from Rajasthan's Jaipur after a controversy erupted over his candidature. The grand old party has replaced Sharma with Pratap Singh Khachariyawas.

According to reports, Sharma is associated with ‘The Jaipur Dialogues’ - an organisation that identifies itself as a “platform for the right thinking people” and often ridicules the Congress and opposition leaders, including Rahul Gandhi. However, Sharma, whose family has been linked with the Congress for a long time, claimed that he had severed ties with the directorship of Jaipur Dialogue Forum, reported the Indian Express. It added that Sharma had nothing to do with the management of the Jaipur Dialogue YouTube channel - which criticised the Congress party.

Sharma's candidature was questioned on social media by several Congress leaders. On Saturday, party MP Shashi Tharoor took a swipe at the party's Jaipur candidature on X, formerly known as Twitter, by sharing an old post of the organisation that said “Shashi Tharoor is just Rahul Gandhi with a thesaurus he stole from a library on his way out”.

Also read: BJP's 5th candidates list for Lok Sabha election: Kangana Ranaut from Mandi, Arun Govil from Meerut

"He must have undergone some sort of Pauline epiphany on the road to 24 Akbar! This is just one of several dozen tweets from his handle attacking me,” Tharoor wrote.

Sharma's name was announced by the grand old party in its third list of candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

Who is Sunil Sharma's replacement Pratap Singh Khachariyawas?

Pratap Singh Khachariyawas is a senior Congress leader who has previously served as the cabinet minister of food and civil supplies consumer affairs government of Rajasthan. He has also held the post of the spokesperson of Rajasthan Pradesh Congress Committee and president of Jaipur Congress since 2015.

Khachariyawas is the nephew of ex-vice president Bhairon Singh Shekhawat.

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HT News Desk
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