Jaipur: After a complete rout in the Lok Sabha elections, the ruling Congress in Rajasthan managed to save face by winning one of the two assembly seats that went for bypolls on October 21.
The Congress won the Mandawa seat in Jhunjhunu, while the BJP’s alliance partner Rashtriya Loktantrik Party (RLTP) won the Khinvsar seat in Nagaur.
The BJP had won both these assembly seats in the 2018 elections. They became vacant after the MLAs – RLTP supremo Hanuman Beniwal (Khinvsar) and BJP’s Narendra Kumar (Mandawa) – were elected to the Lok Sabha earlier this year.
RLTP expands in Jat-dominated Nagaur
Despite fielding a senior Jat leader in Khinvsar, the Congress lost to a newcomer, also a Jat. However, the party managed to reduce the margin of defeat.
RLTP’s Narayan Beniwal, who is Hanuman Beniwal’s brother, emerged victorious in this seat in his political debut. He defeated the Congress’s Harendra Mirdha by a margin of 4,630 votes.
Narayan has been handling Hanuman’s election campaign since the beginning of his political career in Khinvsar.
On the other hand, Mirdha had served as a cabinet minister in a previous Congress government and his father Ram Niwas Mirdha was a senior Congress leader from Nagaur.
The Khinvsar seat has been held by the Beniwal since 2008. In 2008, Hanuman won on a BJP ticket but soon parted ways with the party. He contested as an independent in 2013 and won, before forming the RLTP and emerging victorious for the third time in 2018. In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, he allied with the BJP for the Nagaur Lok Sabha seat and won, defeating Jyoti Mirdha.
Interestingly, reports suggest that Beniwal, who was then a staunch BJP critic, wanted to ally with the Congress for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. The grand old party didn’t agree and instead fielded a member of the Mirdha family. It is believed that the Congress is paying the price of underestimating Beniwal.
Over the past two decades, the Mirdhas have consistently failed to appeal to the voters in Nagaur.
Narayan Beniwal. Photo: Facebook/BeniwalNarayan
Mandawa: Congress defeats defector
In the Mandawa seat in Jhunjhunu, Congress candidate Rita Chaudhary defeated Sushila Seegda, a former Congress leader who was expelled after the 2018 assembly polls for alleged anti-party activities. She contested on the BJP ticket this time, by a margin of 33,704 votes.
Seegda is a known grassroots politician and has served as a Zila Parishad pradhan four times, but this was her debut in assembly elections. Chaudhary’s father Ram Narayan Chaudhary, a senior Congress leader, had won this seat many times in the past.
Political analyst Ashafaq Kayamkhani told The Wire there are two camps within the Congress in Jhunjhunu – the Ola and Chaudhary camps.
Seegda is known to be a close aide of Brijendra Singh Ola, Congress MLA from Jhunjhunu and the son of former Congress stalwart Sis Ram Ola.
When Chaudhary lost the 2018 assembly polls, she blamed the Ola family for her defeat. The Ola’s had objected to her candidature this time and didn’t attend her nomination rally and campaign. “Sis Ram Ola and Ram Narayan Chaudhary have been the two power centres of the Congress in Jhunjhunu,” said Kayamkhani.
Sushila Seegda and Rita Chaudhary. Photo: Facebook Illustration: The Wire
Chaudhary had lost to the BJP’s Narendra Kumar by a margin of 2,346 votes in the last assembly elections and by 17,118 votes in the 2013 assembly polls. In the 2008 assembly elections, she defeated Kumar by mere 405 votes.
After Kumar, the BJP had no candidates from Mandawa and relied on the anti-Chaudhary sentiment within the Congress while fielding Seegda.
A total of 12 candidates had contested the two bypolls. The voter turnout in Mandawa was 69.61% and 62.66% in Khinvsar.
After these results, the Congress has 107 MLAs out of the 200 assembly seats in Rajasthan, including the six who defected to the party from the BSP last month.
The BJP has 72 MLAs, the RLTP has three, the CPI(M) and Bhartiya Tribal Party have two MLAs each. The Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), which allied with the Congress in the assembly polls, has one MLA and 13 are independent MLAs.
