The Congress is all set to turn the upcoming bypolls for the two Lok Sabha seats of Ajmer and Alwar in Rajasthan into a high-stakes battle with the BJP.
The party is planning to field Rajasthan PCC chief Sachin Pilot in Ajmer and Jitendra Singh, who is the scion of the Alwar royal family, in the constituency in Shekhawati region.
While a final decision has not yet been taken, according to sources, the Congress leadership is keen that Pilot and Singh contest the elections despite the chances of failure being on the higher side.
The bypolls were necessitated by the death of sitting BJP MPs Sanwar Lal Jat (Ajmer) and Mahant Chandnath (Alwar). The Congress hopes that by wresting the two constituencies from the saffron party, which had swept all 25 Lok Sabha seats on offer in Rajasthan in the 2014 elections, it can claim a morale booster of a victory just about a year before the state will see assembly elections.
The significance of the bypoll is that the Congress will get an opportunity to not only project the fight as a semi-final before the assembly polls to be held towards the end of 2018, but also use it to show that the popularity of Modi on the wane.
“It is not just about winning two Lok Sabha seats. If we win Alwar and Ajmer, it will signify a turn in the story for us. That is why we will make our best efforts to win the bypoll,” said a senior Congress leader involved in election strategy process.
The Congress feels that it has a good chance of winning the bypolls as the BJP's success in the Lok Sabha elections was largely due to the popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Besides, the Vasundhara Raje government in the state has found itself on the back foot of late, especially with regard to farmers' agitations. However, if the Congress is fielding Pilot and Singh in the elections, it is a big gambit as winning the two seats will be a difficult task for the party.
Bypolls have traditionally been decided in favour of the ruling party. Moreover, the electoral scene in Rajasthan has not turned completely against the BJP, with the Congress failing to reverse things completely in the panchayat by-elections, the results for which were announced on Tuesday. Both the Congress and the BJP won 12 seats each out of the 26 that went to polls. While the Congress won seats that were previously held by the BJP, it lost the same number of seats to the saffron party.
The dilemma for Pilot would be that a defeat in Ajmer would eclipse his efforts as Rajasthan Congress president to get the party ready for the assembly elections. He is a chief ministerial probable and if he loses the bypoll so close to the assembly polls, it would bring his leadership under a cloud in an already faction-ridden state unit of the party.
Pilot, who was defeated by Jat in Ajmer in 2014 by 1,70,000 votes, however, seemed to be in election mode already as he accused the BJP government of neglecting the constituency in the last four years and not doing much in terms of development. Talking to reporters as his name began doing the rounds for the bypoll, he said, “I have had the honour of representing Ajmer Lok Sabha before. If the party leadership decides, who will refuse the honour?”
Besides development, the issues that the Congress is expected to raise in the elections include price rise, unemployment and farmers' issues.
The BJP is expected to field someone from Jat's family in Ajmer, hoping to get sympathy votes. In Alwar, the BJP might field a prominent Yadav leader. Yadavs are said to play a decisive role in elections in the constituency. Singh had lost to Chandnath by a whopping 2,84,000 votes.
