Daily Mirror (Sri Lanka)

Modi’s maharani fights key Indian state election

-

JODHPUR AFP DEC7,2018- An Indian princess allied to Prime Minister Narendra Modi faced a tough battle for re-election on Friday as the hard-fought desert state of Rajasthan went to the polls.

Defeat for Vasundhara Raje, Rajasthan’s chief minister, in the western state of 47 million people would be a blow for Modi’s image as a surefire vote-winner ahead of general elections in 2019.

That the charismati­c but fiery Raje is a maharani, or princess, is nothing unusual in Rajasthan, a state famous for its forts and grand palaces with peacock-filled lawns.

It is one of India’s few regions where the local royal families going back centuries, and outlasting British rule have flourished in democratic politics since independen­ce in 1947. Raje, 65, is the daughter of a former maharaja and married an erstwhile ruler of another dynasty. Her main challenger in her constituen­cy is Manvendra Singh, another blue blood from western Rajasthan.

Another is Siddhi Kumari, also a princess and a two-time state lawmaker who lives in a wing of her ancestral palace in Bikaner around 340 kilometres (210 miles) from the state capital Jaipur.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from Sri Lanka