The Congress on Friday changed its candidate in Rajasthan’s Bhilwara Lok Sabha constituency, replacing Dr Damodar Gurjar with veteran party leader and former Assembly Speaker C.P. Joshi.
Gurjar has now been fielded from Rajsamand, where the proposed candidate, Sudarshan Singh Rawat. announced his unwillingness to contest as his consent had not been taken before his name was announced.
The change comes amid resentment amongst the Brahmins of the state as the Congress had not fielded even a single candidate from the community in the Lok Sabha polls.
Sarva Brahmin Mahasabha President Suresh Mishra had said: “It seems Congress doesn’t want votes from the Brahmin community. It gave a single seat to a Brahmin from Jaipur and then cancelled it as well. Since Independence, parties have been giving two to three seats to Brahmin candidates. Around 1 crore people are from the Brahmin community in the state. This is a disrespect to this community.”
Senior Congress leader Varun Purohit said: “Rajasthan gave the party stalwart Brahmin leaders and it was never defeated till the time it respected this community. However, neglecting Brahmins and promoting other castes led to the Congress’s debacle. Examples of UP and Bihar can be taken in this context where Congress failed to revive after wiping out Brahmin leadership. Now the same story is being repeated in Rajasthan.”.
The party offered a ticket to Sunil Sharma from Jaipur, but he withdrew following a huge controversy over his connection with the RSS-linked “Jaipur Dialogues”. Many Congress leaders, including Shashi Tharoor, had questioned his loyalty to the party. Thereafter, he was dropped and former state minister Pratap Singh Khachariyawas was made the candidate.
Brahmin leaders claimed that their community gave good leadership to the state, citing Chief Ministers like Pt. Hiralal Shastri, Jai Narayan Vyas, Tika Ram Paliwal and Hari Dev Joshi.
