Religion, caste sway polls in Jaisalmer & Barmer | Jaipur News

With habitations in Jaisalmer and Barmerdistricts spread far and wide, candidates contesting the elections here usually make more efforts than others to cover the constituencies. The Thar desert spanning the two districts makes it even harder. Contesting elections in these big districts-Jaisalmer spread over a 38,000 sq km and Barmer across 28,000 sq km-is no less than a war.No wonder that in Jaisalmer, barring two exceptions, no candidate has ever won on the trot.

There were no concrete roads in the two districts in the first few decades after the country’s Independence. When the assembly and Lok Sabha elections were held together for the first time in Rajasthan in 1952, the exercise went on for ten days. The polling parties moved around on camelbacks, and the voters faced a lot of problems in reaching the polling stations.
Before delimitation in 2008, the whole of Jaisalmer district was one assembly constituency. After delimitation, the district was divided into two assembly constituencies-Jaisalmer and Pokhran.
Since 1952, Jaisalmer constituency has seen 15 elections, and Congress has won just four times. Its main rival, BJP (formed in 1980), has won the seat five times while Janata Dal, Janata Party and Swatantra Party have won once each, and independent candidates thrice. BJP won the seat from 2003 to 2013, but Rooparam Meghwal of Congress, a retired chief engineer of the waterworks department, bagged it in 2018 by a big margin of more than 29,000 votes, beating his BJP rival Sang Singh Bhati.
Jaisalmer constituency is dominated by Muslim and SC/ST voters, and the candidates win mostly on voters deciding along caste and religious equations. In 2018, Meghwal gained the support of Muslim and SC/ST voters. He had lost to BJP’s Chhotu Singh in the 2013 polls.
Only Hukum Singh and Chhotu Singh have the distinction of winning the Jaisalmer seat two times. In the 1957 polls, Singh contested as an independent candidate and defeated Congress’s Satyadev. Singh won the seat as a Congress candidate in the next election. BJP’s Chhotu Singh won the seat in the 2008 and 2018 elections.
The family of Sindhi Muslim religious guru Gazi Fakir used to wield huge influence in united Jaisalmer district. After his demise in 2021, his son and Pokhran MLA Shale Mohammed, a minister in the Ashok Gehlot government, has been the religious guru of Muslims. He won the Pokhran seat in 2008 and 2018.
Congress has won the Pokhran seat twice and BJP once since its creation in 2008. Mohammed won in 2008 and 2018 while BJP’s Shaitan Singh won in 2013.