Jaipur: The Bharatiya Janata Party and Congress have completed the task of selecting their candidates the night before the last day of filing nominations for the upcoming Assembly elections in Rajasthan. Both the parties have repeated the names of most of their sitting MLAs in a hope that it will again work in their favour.
While the Congress is contesting the elections on 199 seats with Bharatpur seat left for the Rashtriya Lok Dal, the BJP has announced candidates on all 200 seats.
After many surveys, repeated rounds of meetings, involving senior party leaders, the Congress has retained 89 out of the 108 sitting MLAs. Talking about ministers, out of the 20, including chief minister himself Ashok Gehlot, 26 are once again in the fray.
With this, it appears that the grand old party has put aside the fear of anti-incumbency in the state as surveys have shown that people are annoyed with their MLAs.
Gehlot manages to get tickets for most of his loyalists
Gehlot managed to get tickets for most of his loyalists, including independents candidates and turncoats who stood firm with him during the political crisis in the state.
“The list shows Gehlot’s confidence in his government’s performance and the high command’s trust on his decisions to choose candidates. However, the way party workers have been neglected in the name of survey reports is not good for the party as they are feeling cheated,” said a senior Congress leader on the condition of anonymity.
The BJP has also repeated 59 out of the 69 sitting MLAs. It, however, unlike the Congress, did not invite applications from the workers and relied upon the feedback of its workers and different surveys.
The previous track record of the party is of denying tickets to almost half of the sitting MLAs, but this time the party chose the other way.
The sources in the party said that the anti-incumbency factor is not there for the sitting MLAs as the party is in opposition and the other reason for going with the same faces was to keep the party away from resentment of workers and leaders.
However, the party is still facing rebellion on many seats as the turncoats have been given tickets by neglecting the dedicated workers.
Below mentioned leaders have been denied tickets by the Congress:
Mahesh Joshi, Hemaram Choudhary, Lalchand Kataria Bharat Singh Kundanpur, Bharosi Lal Jatav, Johari Lal Meena, Babulal Bairwa, Hiralal, Khildilal Bairwa, Gayatri Trivedi, Safia Zuber, JP Chandelia, Dr. Jitendra Singh, Parasram Mordia, Girraj Malinga, Ram Narayan Meena. And P R Meena., Rajendra Gudha and Sandeep Yadav.
BJP denied tickets to the following leaders:
Kailash Meghwal Suryakanta Vyas Ashok Lahoti Dharam Narayan Joshi Subhash Poonia, Ruparam Muravatiya, Mohanram Chaudhary, Lalit Kumar Ostwal, Chandrabhan Singh Akya, and Shobharani Kushwaha.
