The comfortable Ramgarh by-election win has proven to be the proverbial shot-in-the-arm for the Congress, which has been looking to dent the BJP’s chances of a revival in the upcoming May elections.
Ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, the Congress has managed to find a weapon to fight the BJP. The comfortable Ramgarh by-election win has proven to be the proverbial shot-in-the-arm for the Congress, which has been looking to dent the BJP’s chances of a revival in the upcoming May elections.
Since the date of by-election was announced, the Congress leaders were confident of winning the seat on arithmetic of caste and candidate’s selection. The party fielded Shafia Khan, wife of senior party leader, Juber Khan, a seasoned politician accepted across castes lines.
On the other hand, the BJP bet on Sukhwant Singh, former Pradhan, who toiled on his own through the constituency but failed to get support of the state level leaders who shied away from campaigning for him.
The Congress strategists, though, did not take the elections casually and planned a strategy to ensure the victory. They were quite aware that losing the seat even by a single vote could be a deadly blow to the newly inducted Gehlot government, which gets battle-ready for Lok Sabha elections in April-May.
The Congress has set up a target of winning all Lok Sabha seats under its Mission-25 in Rajasthan. Hence, Chief minister Ashok Gehlot, PCC chief and deputy chief minister Sachin Pilot and Rajasthan in charge, Avinash Pandey, continuously monitored the campaigning. All three of them held a massive rally on January 25, just three days before polling, to ensure party’s victory.
The party had appointed health minister Raghu Sharma as in charge of the seat who regularly toured the constituency appealing to voters to have faith in the Congress. On the other hand, ex-Alwar MP, Bhanwar Jitendra Singh, who wishes to contest Lok Sabha election, left no stone unturned to mobilize the traditional voters by holding corner meetings in the villages. An adverse result for Congress in Ramgarh could be troublesome for Singh too.
When the results were out, Congress leaders knew they had a chip on their shoulders. From February onwards, when the campaigning for parliamentary elections will intensify, the Congress will use the victory as a mandate of the people on the policies and programmes on Gehlot government. It would serve as a working tool to take on the BJP, which has failed in poll battle, once again.
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