Jaipur: Triangular fights on two seats, heavyweights contesting on half a dozen seats and low voting in the first phase have made the second phase of the Loksabha election in Rajasthan interesting. The polling on 13 seats of Loksabha will be held on April 26th.
In the second phase, voting will be held in Jodhpur, Barmer, Jalore-Sirohi, Pali, Rajsamand, Chittorgarh, Bhilwara, Ajmer, Udaipur, Dungarpur-Banswara, Jhalawar-Baran, Kota-Bundi and Tonk-Sawai Madhopur seats of the south-western part of the state. There is a triangular fight on Barmer and Banswara seats while the rest will have a direct contest between Congress and BJP.
Considering the recently held assembly elections, the BJP looks strong in these 13 Loksabha seats as out of 104 assembly seats falling under these seats, BJP has 73, while Congress has only 23. Independents and others have seven seats.
In the first phase of Lok Sabha elections in the state, Congress had a lead over BJP in seven out of 12 seats, while in the second phase, the situation was the opposite and BJP had a lead on all 13 seats.
The BJP is holding these 13 seats for the last two Loksabha elections and the victory margin on most of the seats was between two to five lakhs. In Bhilwara, BJP's Subhash Bahedia had registered the biggest victory of 6.11 lakhs.
Compared to the first phase, BJP has not made any major changes in the candidates also. In the first phase the party had changed the candidates on ten out of 12 seats, while in the second phase, the party has repeated eight candidates.
On the other hand, the Congress has fielded new faces in all the seats except Vaibhav Gehlot, who also has changed the seat from Jodhpur to Jalore this time.
The central leadership of Congress refrained from campaigning on these seats and it was led by the local leadership while looking at the low voting percentage in the first phase, the BJP did not let down the campaign and PM Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah held three election rallies each on these seats. The controversial Mangalsutra statement PM Modi also came from one of the election rallies in Rajasthan.
In the second phase, many big faces are in the fray from both parties. These include Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, Union Ministers Arjun Ram Meghwal and Kailash Choudhary, party state president CP Joshi, former minister from Congress to BJP Mahendrajit Singh Malviya, Dushyant Singh, son of former CM Vasundhara Raje. Talking about Congress, former Assembly Speaker CP Joshi, former MLA Prahlad Gunjal, who went from BJP to Congress, and Vaibhav Gehlot, son of former CM Ashok Gehlot are in the election fray.
