Congress pins hope on fresh faces in Rajasthan

The grand old party has chosen five new faces in the second list announced for the state.

Jaipur: A month ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, Congress declared its second list which includes the names of five more candidates. Congress left the Sikar seat for CPI (M). 

Congress has chosen new faces for the five seats they declared today. 

Sunil Sharma, chancellor and proprietor of the Gyan Vihar University in Jaipur has been chosen for the Jaipur constituency, which is a known Brahmin seat. His family has been associated with Congress for long as his late father Sunil Sharma was Jaipur district president for many years.  

With a law degree, Sharma is said to follow an ideology akin to the Congress. “Incidentally the venue of an ideology workshop conducted by the Congress Party just before the Assembly elections was at Sunil Sharma’s Gyan Vihar University,” Narayan Bareth, a senior political analyst told DH. Ambitious and vocal, Sharma is said to be well-read and a supporter for value-based and ethical leadership. 

For Pali seat, Congress has placed its bet on Sangeeta Beniwal, who hails from Jodhpur. She was the chairperson of Rajasthan State Commission for Protection of Child Rights during Ashok Gehlot tenure and is vocal and active on women issues too. A Jat, Sangeeta is young and articulate and may give a tough fight to BJP’s P P Choudhury. 

From Jhalawar-Baran constituency, which BJP’s bastion due to Vasundhara Raje and her son Dushyant Singh’s dominance, Congress has pinned hope on Urmila Jain Bhaya, who is former Congress minister Pramod Jain Bhaya’s wife. Urmila, however, is a Congress leader in her own right, being the zila pramukh of Baran Congress. She is also associated with Parshwanath Mania Seva Charitable Trust and is known to provide food to patients in Baran’s district hospital. Ever smiling, accessible and involved in charitable work, she remains the backbone of her husband Pramod Jain Bhaya’s political innings. 

Umedaram Beniwal, who recently crossed over from Hanuman Beniwal’s Rashtriya Loktantrik Party (RLP) to Congress has been nominated for Barmer constituency. A zilla parishad member in Barmer,  Umedaram contested the Baytoo Assembly seat twice and came a close second.

A Jat, he would have been competing with Congress’s Jat leader Harish Choudhary in the region. Harish Choudhary, MLA Baytoo and former Barmer-Jaisalmer MP and an influential Congress leader in the region is said to have told Umedaram to join Congress or forget about the ticket. Harish himself is said to be interested in state politics now. 

Ganganagar which is a SC seat has been given to Kuldeep Indora. There were reports that Congress was thinking of fielding former Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi from this SC-dominated seat. Kuldep’s father Heeralal Indora was a big Congress leader from the region, having served as legislator four times and was a minister too. Kuldeep had contested the Anupgarh Assembly seat in 2018 and was the runner-up in the contest. Ganganagar as a Lok Sabha constituency has the largest SC voters in the country. 

Congress has left the Sikar Lok Sabha seat for CPI (M) with which it has allied. BJP’s Sumedhanand Saraswati has been winning it for the last two times but the constituency has a strong farmers' union and a large CPM presence in the region. 

With the declaration of five names, Congress has announced 15 names out of the total 25 seats in Rajasthan.  Congress has already named the candidates for Bikaner, Churu, Jhunjhunu, Alwar, Bharatpur, Tonk-Sawai Madhopur, Jodhpur, Jalore-Sirohi, Udaipur and Chittorgarh constituencies.