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Lok Sabha elections 2019: Congress looks to build on assembly election win
The most interesting contests will take place in Jaipur Rural and Nagaur. In Jaipur Rural, two Olympians — marksman and Union minister Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and discus thrower and legislator Krishna Poonia of the Congress— are locked in a fight.
The northern and eastern parts of Rajasthan will go to polls on May 6, bring the Lok Sabha elections to a close in the state.
The two areas comprise 12 seats, including four reserved for the scheduled castes (SC) — 13 seats have already polled in the previous phase.
The most interesting contests will take place in Jaipur Rural and Nagaur. In Jaipur Rural, two Olympians — marksman and Union minister Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and discus thrower and legislator Krishna Poonia of the Congress— are locked in a fight. In Nagaur, the poll battle is between Congress’ Jyoti Mirdha and Hanuman Beniwal, founder of the Rashtriya Loktantrik Party. Mirdha is the granddaughter of veteran Jat leader Nathuram Mirdha. The Bahujan Samaj Party will contest 10 of these seats on Monday.
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Northern Rajasthan, a Congress stronghold, includes the Shekhawati region comprising Sikar, Jhunjhunu and Churu constituencies (Poonia, for instance, is an MLA from Churu). In Shekhawati, the epicentre of the farmers’ protest that marked much of last year, the Congress won 16 assembly segments out of 24 in the December state elections. The BJP won only five, drawing a blank in Sikar district.
BJP MP and union minister Arjun Ram Meghwal seeks re-election in Bikaner, a seat reserved for contestants from the scheduled caste category. He takes on cousin and Congress candidate Madan Gopal Meghwal. Other reserved seats going to polls include Ganganagar, Bharatpur and Karauli-Dholpur.
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In Sikar, the Congress has fielded Subhash Maharia against the incumbent BJP MP Sumedhanand Saraswati. Dausa will witness a contest between Congress’s Savita Meena and BJP’s Jaskaur Meena.
Political expert Narayan Bareth said the Congress is likely to win more seats in the May 6 phase than the previous phase. “The party is strong in the SC seats.”
In 2014, the BJP swept the state, winning all 25 seats. The landslide victory was preceded by the party winning 163 out of 200 seats in the Assembly elections.
However, after the 2018 Assembly election, the Congress looks strong in eastern Rajasthan where it won 20 out of 32 assembly segments of four Parliamentary constituencies — Alwar, Bharatpur, Karauli-Dholpur and Dausa. By contrast, the BJP won only three seats here.
The Bahujan Samaj Party also has some influence in this area which borders Uttar Pradesh. In 2018, BSP won five assembly seats in eastern Rajasthan.
