BENIWAL PARTY WON 3 SEATS, WAS SPOILSPORT IN FEW OTHERS
:The Rashtriya Loktantrik Party (RLTP) may have won only three of the 58 seats it had contested in Rajasthan, polling 2.4% (or 8,56,038) votes, it played spoilsport in many other constituencies, including three in Barmer district.
Hanuman Beniwal, a firebrand Jat leader who left the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to form the RLTP only a month before the assembly polls, not only retained his Khinvsar seat, but won two more — Merta (Indira Devi) and Bhopalgarh (Pukhraj).
In Barmer district’s eight assembly constituencies, while the party didn’t win any of the six seats it contested, its candidate Ummeda Ram was the runner-up in Baytu, losing out to Congress’ Harish Choudhary by 13,803 votes, whereas Surta Ram Meghwal (in Chohtan), Udaram Meghwal (in Sheo) and Narayanram Choudhary (in Pachpadra) were the chief reasons the BJP candidates were relegated to the runner-up position on the three seats. The Rashtriya Loktantrik Party did not field candidates on Barmer and Jaisalmer seats.
Contesting from Sheo, Udaram polled nearly 51,000 votes (or about 25%), helping Congress’ Ameen Khan defeat BJP’s Khangar Singh Sodha by about 24,000 votes.
In Siwana assembly seat, the Congress’ Pankaj Pratap Singh and the RLTP’s Sataram Dewasi polled nearly the same number of votes — about 20,000. BJP’s sitting legislator Hameer Singh Bhayal defeated independent candidate Balaram on this seat by a margin of 957 votes.
Political analyst Shankarlal Dhariwal said that though the Rashtriya Loktantrik Party was not able to win any seat in Barmer, its performance was an indication that the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress were not the only choice for the voters.
Dhariwal said that the response to the Rashtriya Loktantrik Party shows that voters were willing to explore leaders belonging to other than the two principal, national parties.
BARMER