Jaipur: Two Jat-dominated assembly seats in Rajasthan – Khinvsar and Mandawa – will go for bypolls on Monday.
Twelve candidates – nine in Mandawa and three in Khinvsar – will try their luck. The Congress, BJP and the Rashtriya Loktantrik Party (RLTP) are the major contenders. The bypolls were necessitated after MLAs, RLTP supremo Hanuman Beniwal from Khinvsar and BJP’s Narendra Kumar from Mandawa, were elected to the Lok Sabha in May.
The Congress has fielded Harendra Mirdha, who hails from the affluent Mirdha Jat family from Nagaur. Mirdha served as a cabinet minister in a previous Congress government. His father Ram Niwas Mirdha was a senior Congress leader from Nagaur.
The BJP has allied with the RLTP in Khinvsar seat, where the latter’s chief Hanuman Beniwal’s brother Narayan Beniwal is contesting.
For the Mandawa seat in Jhunjhunu, the BJP has fielded Sushila Seegda, a former Congress leader from the region who was expelled from the party after the 2018 polls over alleged anti-party activities.
The Congress has fielded Rita Chaudhary. In the last assembly elections, she lost to the BJP’s Narendra Kumar by a margin of 2,346 votes.
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Sixty polling stations in Mandawa and 121 in Khinwsar have been identified as sensitive. “Extensive security arrangements have been made for the elections in the two assembly constituencies on Monday,” chief electoral officer Anand Kumar said. “Eight companies of paramilitary forces have been deployed in each of the poll-bound constituencies,” he added.
In Mandawa, 259 polling booths have been set up for the 2,27,414 voters who are eligible to exercise their franchise, whereas 2,50,155 people will cast their votes in 266 booths in Khinvsar. Polling will be held from 7 am to 6 pm and counting of votes will take place on October 24.
Out of the 200 assembly seats in Rajasthan, the Congress has 106 MLAs, including the six who defected to the party from the BSP last month.
The BJP has 72 MLAs, CPI(M), RLTP and the Bhartiya Tribal Party (BTP) have two MLAs each. The Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), which allied with the Congress in the assembly polls, has one MLA while 13 are independent MLAs.