AMN / JAIPUR
Congress party is all set to wrest all the three seats, one assembly and two parliamentary, where by polls were held on Monday.
Party raced ahead of the BJP in the Lok Sabha constituencies of Ajmer and Alwar and the Mandalgarh Assembly seat where by-elections held on Monday.
Congress candidates led from the beginning in both the Lok Sabha seats and edged past the Bharatiya Janata Party in Mandalgarh after initially trailing at the second spot, Election Commission officials said.
Even as the vote count continued, Karan Singh Yadav of the Congress had secured 245,774 votes in Alwar against Jaswant Singh Yadav’s (BJP) 192,924 votes.
Raghu Sharma of the Congress had 154,336 votes in his kitty against the 128,291 bagged by the BJP’s Ram Swaroop Lamba in Ajmer.
Vivek Dhakar of the Congress led by 2,112 votes in Mandalgarh. He had 45,011 votes against 42,999 votes of the BJP.
The Congress appears set to win its first seats in Rajasthan since it was wiped out for a duck in the 2014 national election. The party has won the Mandalgarh assembly seat and is leading in the Ajmer and Alwar parliamentary seats – all held by the ruling BJP – in crucial by-polls seen as a preview of state elections due later this year.
Both the ruling BJP and the Congress prepped for the by-polls as they would for a full election, with Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje and Congress leader Sachin Pilot campaigning hard.
“Initial trends show that the people have given their blessings to the Congress and have rejected the Vasundhara Raje government and its policies. Young people have realized that the politics of polarization doesn’t work,” said Congress leader Sachin Pilot, who had lost the Ajmer seat in the 2014 Lok Sabha election in which the Congress failed to win a single seat in Rajasthan.