It’s one-sided battle in Jhalrapatan
KOTA: This time, the Congress has fielded a woman to fight Bharatiya Janata Party chief ministerial candidate Vasundhara Raje in her home constituency Jhalrapatan.
Congress’ Meenakshi Chandrawat is young, local and is a former MLA who had won from Khanpur in the 1998 assembly election. Like Raje, she belongs to the Rajput community that constitutes 1/10th of the population in Jhalrapatan. She has been a youth Congress activist for a long time and got married recently.
However, Rajes’s stature, history of electoral wins and the fact that she would become the chief minister if she wins the election give her a significant advantage over Chandrawat. While Raje has won her last two assembly elections in Jhalrapatan with huge majority, Chandrawat lost both the polls in Khanpur assembly constituency after 1998. In 2003, Raje defeated Congress candidate Rama Pilot in her debut assembly election by a margin of 27,375 votes and in 2008, she defeated former Congress MLA from Jhalarapatan Mohanlal Rathore by an even bigger margin of 32,581 votes.
Unlike, Rama Pilot, the stature of Meenakshi does not stand even closer to Raje and, certainly, the contest between Raje and Meenakshi cannot be termed even. Raje had also been a fivetime MP from Jhalawar consecutively for five times since 1989. The parliamentary constituency is now held by her son Dushyant Singh. With no major independent candidate or those from any other party in the battlefield in Jhalrapatan, the election looks like a contest between Raje and Chadrawat.