Keen tussle on the cards in Ajmer for Pilot

Ajmer, home to the shrine of Sufi saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti, will see state Congress chief and Union Minister Sachin Pilot squaring off against prominent Jat leader Sanwar Lal Jat of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Sanwar Lal Jat is a minister in the cabinet of Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje.
No other prominent leader is in the fray in the election to the Lok Sabha from the constituency.

Besides caste-based equations, the performance and direct contact of a candidate with the people will also matter in tipping the electoral scales this time.

Ajmer traditionally has been a BJP bastion but Pilot broke this stranglehold in the last general polls and won by over 76,000 votes. However, the Congress lost in all eight Assembly segments falling in the Ajmer Lok Sabha constituency during the state polls last year by over 1.92 lakh votes.

The dominant Rawat and Jat voters helped the BJP win in Ajmer.

However, in the redrawing of constituencies in the last Lok Sabha elections, the partly dominating Rawat belt of Beawar was merged into the Rajsamand Lok Sabha constituency and Dudhu Assembly constituency of Jaipur was included in Ajmer in the delimitation process. “This new equation helped Pilot to gain ground in Ajmer,” said Roop Singh, a keen political watcher.

There are over 16 lakh voters in the Ajmer constituency. Of these, the STs and SCs dominate with 3.85 lakh, 2.10 lakh are Jats, 2 lakh Gujjars, 1.50 lakh Rawats, about 2.60 lakh Muslims, 1 lakh Rajputs, 1. 45 lakh Vaish and others.