The Hindu : Rajasthan BJP unhappy over allocation of seat to JD(U)

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Mar 27, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

Rajasthan BJP unhappy over allocation of seat to JD(U)

By Sunny Sebastian

JAIPUR, MARCH 26. The Rajasthan Bharatiya Janata Party is not happy over the allocation of the reserved seat of Banswara to the Janata Dal (United) to contest in the coming Lok Sabha elections. The seat was won by the Congress in the 1999 elections.

Banswara, perhaps the last citadel of the Socialist forces in Rajasthan, is the lone seat the Janata Dal (U) proposes to contest in the State. "The party could have fought from six Lok Sabha constituencies where it has a following,'' points out Narendra Singh Yadav, the chief general secretary of the party, while defending the claim for the seat under the NDA alliance.

Apart from the fact that Banswara is as good as any seat in Rajasthan for the BJP, handing it over to the Janata Dal also would mean that the slogan voiced by its national president, Venkaiah Naidu, about winning "pachis mein pachis''(all 25 out of 25) in the State will no longer hold good.

"Our winning the seat is one and the same for the NDA and the Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee,'' Mr.Yadav pleads while trying to assuage the hurt sentiments of the BJP leadership in the State.

The two seats the Janata Dal (U) won in the recent Assembly polls--Kushalgarh and Bagidora--fall in the Banswara Lok Sabha constituency. For the BJP, the tribal districts of Banswara and Dungarpur which constitute eight segments of the Lok Sabha constituency is comparatively a new territory but the party did well here in the recent Assembly elections.

The BJP has four sitting MLAs in the Lok Sabha constituency against two each of the Congress and the Janata Dal (U). In fact it was the victory from Sagwara in the by-elections in 2002 that had heralded the big win for the BJP in Rajasthan later in 2003. The BJP also has support of work force coming across the State from Gujarat.

Moreover the party thinks the joining of Raj Singh Dungarpur, a scion of the former royal family of Dungarpur, would provide an additional mileage to it if it were to contest from Banswara.

In the 1999 Lok Sabha elections Tara Chand Bhagora of the Congress had defeated the Janata Dal (U) nominee, Rajesh Katara, by a margin of 1.16 lakh votes in Banswara. This time the Congress has given the ticket to Prabulal Rawat. Mr.Bhagora was not re-nominated as the practice has been to alternate the candidate between the districts of Banswara and Dungarpur in every election. Curiously the Janata Dal(U) is yet to decide on its candidate from Banswara. The State president of the party, Gopal Pacherwal, along with national general secretary, K.C.Tyagi, was in Banswara last week in this connection.

"It is our seat,'' asserts the former State president of the BJP, Gulab Chand Kataria, who is presently the State PWD Minister. "We have done a lot of work in the area and are in a position to take it from the Congress,'' he points out. "It used to be a stronghold of the Socialists once Mama Baleshwar Dayal was alive but not any more,'' Mr.Kataria, who hails from the Udaipur division, notes.

"The Janata Dal has no existence in Dungarpur,'' Mr.Kataria says. In the Assembly elections, the Congress and the BJP had bagged two each of the four seats in Dungarpur district. "Our central leadership may have its own compulsions in allotting the seat to Janata Dal. But we are not excited about the Janata Dal contesting the seat,'' he asserts.

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