JAIPUR: A male nurse at the district hospital in Rajasthan’s Dungarpur is contesting against a doctor of the same facility in the November 25 assembly polls, springing a bitter pill for the senior colleague after working 10 years together as healers. The nurse-doctor bout is being touted as possibly the first such face-off in elections in the desert state.
Bansilal Katara (41) has taken voluntary retirement from government service to contest as the BJP candidate, while Dr Deepak Ghogra (43) is fighting the polls on a Bharatiya Tribal Party (BTP) ticket after taking permission from the Rajasthan high court to participate in the elections as he is an employee of the state.
Both Katara and Ghogra are tribals and poll first-timers. Dungarpur has a sizeable tribal population. The contest has become more interesting as the doctor’s cousin, Ganesh Goghra, is the outgoing MLA of the governing Congress and has been fielded again. “We were colleagues, treating patients together but we are now political rivals,” said Ghogra, the medical officer of the hospital attached to the government-run Medical College, Dungarpur.
The 10-year bonhomie is now a thing of the past but the two-way attacks are polite by conventional standards of election acrimony.
“He (Ghogra) is contesting the polls with (legal) protection. If he loses, he will rejoin government duty. But I have resigned from service to serve people through politics,” said Katara, who has a political background as his father was a sarpanch (village head).
Both hope that since they are popular among their patients, they will be able to garner support from such people. Their common mission is to make Dungarpur a “healthy” district.
Bansilal Katara (41) has taken voluntary retirement from government service to contest as the BJP candidate, while Dr Deepak Ghogra (43) is fighting the polls on a Bharatiya Tribal Party (BTP) ticket after taking permission from the Rajasthan high court to participate in the elections as he is an employee of the state.
Both Katara and Ghogra are tribals and poll first-timers. Dungarpur has a sizeable tribal population. The contest has become more interesting as the doctor’s cousin, Ganesh Goghra, is the outgoing MLA of the governing Congress and has been fielded again. “We were colleagues, treating patients together but we are now political rivals,” said Ghogra, the medical officer of the hospital attached to the government-run Medical College, Dungarpur.
The 10-year bonhomie is now a thing of the past but the two-way attacks are polite by conventional standards of election acrimony.
“He (Ghogra) is contesting the polls with (legal) protection. If he loses, he will rejoin government duty. But I have resigned from service to serve people through politics,” said Katara, who has a political background as his father was a sarpanch (village head).
Both hope that since they are popular among their patients, they will be able to garner support from such people. Their common mission is to make Dungarpur a “healthy” district.
