Rajvi was nominated for the Chittorgarh seat following his expression of displeasure over the omission of his name from the first list released on October 9. Rajvi, the son-in-law of former Vice-President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, replaces BJP’s sitting two-term MLA from Chittorgarh, Chandrabhan Singh Aakhya. After the party’s first list came out, Rajvi had reacted strongly to his omission and issued a controversial statement against Rajsamand MP Diya Kumari, the party’s nominee from Vidyadhar Nagar.
“He (Rajvi) had given the party time till October 23, the 100th birth anniversary of the former Vice-President, asking it to either reconsider his name for his present constituency of Vidyadhar Nagar or field him from Chittorgarh. He was elected to the assembly from Chittorgarh twice—in 1993 and 2003,” said a party source.
The road to Chittorgarh does not look smooth for Rajvi, said sources. Soon after BJP’s second list came out, Aakhya’s supporters began staging protests in Chittorgarh against Rajvi and BJP state president CP Joshi.
As many as 64 constituen cies out of the 83 in the second list have sitting BJP legislators. The party repeated 56 of them and replaced the rest eight. There are 19 seats which BJP candidates had lost to either Congress or other parties. With this list, BJP apparently tried to get its flock together by giving all the factions adequate representation and signalling that Raje’s loyalists have a place in the elections.
“This list is a tactical move to keep Raje actively involved despite not being named as the party’s CM face,” said a BJP leader familiar with the allotment of tickets. The nomination of Congress-turned-BJP leader Jyoti Mirdha for the Nagaur seat is on the expected lines.
She was the only candidate BJP considered for four assembly seats (Nagaur, Deedwana, Parbatsar, and Khinvsar), said sources. She has replaced the incumbent BJP MLA, Mohan Choudhary.
The erstwhile royal of Udaipur, Vishwaraj Singh Mewar, who joined BJP last week, will take on Congress leader CP Joshi from the latter’s home turf of Nathdwara. BJP has projected Mewar as a descendant of Maharana Pratap to sharpen its pitch of cultural nationalism in the November 25 polls.
Leader of the Opposition Rajendra Singh Rathore has been allowed to switch his seat from Churu to Taranagar as the party’s survey had indicated that his position was weak in his home turf. A six-term MLA from Churu, Rathore had beaten his nearest rival, Rafique Mandelia of Congress, in the seat by a narrow margin of just 1,850 votes in the last assembly polls.
For the Sanganer seat, BJP replaced its sitting MLA Ashok Lahoti with Bhajan Lal Sharma. The controversy over Lahoti’s alleged involvement in the BVG corruption case in JMC (Greater) concerning RSS leader Nimbaram cost him the ticket.
Vasundhara Raje will be contesting assembly polls for the sixth time, including five times from her bastion of Jhalrapathan. In the 2018 polls, she had defeated Manvendra Singh, former external affairs minister Jaswant Singh’s son, by 34,980 votes. She was first elected to the assembly from Dholpur in 1985.
She then served as an MP for 13 years before returning to state politics. Unlike BJP’s first list, which had dropped the names of Raje’s loyalists, the second one has at least 15 names considered close to her, including Malviya Nagar and Chabbra candidates Kalicharan Saraf and Pratap Singh Singhvi, respectively.
