Campaigning for by-elections to four Assembly seats in Rajasthan gathered pace with Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje beginning her election tours on Monday from the Surajgarh seat in Jhunjhunu district. She will visit all four constituencies in the coming days.
While the contest is between the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress, both the parties have much at stake in these by-polls. The BJP is putting in all efforts to retain the seats, for the Congress winning even one seat would be a big morale booster.
The four Assembly segments –Surajgarh, Wair (Bharatpur), Kota South and Nasirabad (Ajmer) – will go to polls on September 13. The seats had fallen vacant after the sitting MLAs-- all from the BJP -- were sent to the Lok Sabha in May this year. Nine lakh voters will elect the four representatives.
Though political pundits believe that the contest is tilted in favour of the ruling party, the Congress is leaving no stone unturned to at least win the Nasirabad seat in the Ajmer Parliamentary constituency where the PCC chief Sachin Pilot has lot of goodwill among voters.
Mr. Pilot had in fact lost the Ajmer Lok Sabha seat in the general elections.
The BJP had won 163 seats of the 200 2013 and all 25 Parliamentary seats in May 2014.
In Kota South, the contest is between Sandeep Sharma of the BJP and Shivkant Nandwana of the Congress. Om Birla of the BJP had won this seat in 2013 by a margin of 50,000 votes and improved his victory margin to more than 60,000 in the Lok Sabha polls earlier this year. Traditionally this has been a BJP seat.
For the Wair seat (reserved) in Bharatpur, the BJP has put up Gangaram Koli while the Congress candidate is Bhajanlal Jatav.
For the Nasirabad seat, the Congress has fielded Ramnarayan Gurjar and the BJP candidate is Savita Gaina.
In Surajgarh, BJP rebel Nita Yadav is contesting as an Independent while Digambar Singh is the BJP candidate and Shrawan Kumar of the Congress. Mr Kumar had lost to Santosh Ahlawat (now MP) in 2013 by over 50,000 votes.
