Yash Goyal
Our Correspondent
Jaipur, May 23
As in the 2014 General Election, Rajasthan voted overwhelmingly for Narendra Modi, giving the BJP alliance all 25 of the Lok Sabha seats.
The saffron party candidates defeated rival Congress nominees on 24 seats, while alliance partner RLTP won from Nagaur.
It was a crushing blow to the Congress party, led by state unit chief Sachin Pilot, as BJP's 16 sitting MPs returned to the Lower House of Parliament by vote margins ranging from one lakh to four lakh.
In 2014, it was a Modi wave and this time round, the narrative of national security and nationalism seems to have swung the votes in BJP's favour.
Baba Balaknath won the Alwar LS seat, which the Congress had won in a bypoll in 2018.
No caste equation could give respite to the Congress as it failed to win a single seat despite the fact that the BJP was ousted in the state Assembly elections in 2018.
In a setback to Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, his son Vaibhav Gehlot faced defeat in his maiden election from the Jodhpur Lok Sabha seat, which was won by BJP's Gajendra Singh Shekhawat for the second consecutive time. Shekhawat won the seat with a high margin of 2,74,440 votes.
Ashok Gehlot represented the Jodhpur seat five times from 1980 to 1999.
Another key contestant of the Congress, Manvendra Singh, who quit the BJP in 2018 on the eve of Assembly polls, was defeated by BJP's Kailash Choudhary in the Barmer parliamentary seat. Manvendra had also lost the Assembly poll battle against Vasundhara Raje on the Jhalwar seat.
Raje's son Dushyant Singh made an entry into the LS for the fourth consecutive term by defeating Congress' Pramod Sharma on Jhalawar-Baran seat by a margin of 4,53,928 votes.
Making a new winning record, BJP's sitting MP Subhash Chandra Beharia won the Bhilwara seat by defeating rival, Congress' Rampal Sharma, by a margin of 6,12,000 votes.
A disciple of yoga guru Baba Ramdev, Baba Balaknath defeated Bhanwar Jitendra Singh, former Union Minister and a close friend of Congress president Rahul Gandhi, on the Alwar seat by a margin of 3,29,971 votes.
BJP’s Devji Patel, the sitting MP, defeated her rival, Congress' Ratan Devasi, on Jalore seat by a margin of 2,61,110 votes.
In Tonk-Sawaimadhopur, BJP MP Sukhbir Singh Jaunpuria defeated NN Meena, former UPA minister, by 1,11,291 votes.
from The Tribune http://bit.ly/2YK061w
via Today’s News Headlines
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