Barmer constituency: A stronghold that helped Congress tide over BJP sweep

Barmer assembly constituency in western Rajasthan has largely voted to power a put Congress candidate – seven out of the 14 times an election was held here. The other seven times, Congress’s candidate was the runner-up. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has held the seat once (in 2003) while independent candidates have won twice (in 1993 and 1962).

The Congress’s hold on this seat can be gauged from the fact that when the BJP swept Rajasthan in the 2013 elections, winning 163 of the 200 assembly seats, Barmer was one of the few seats the grand old party had managed to retain.

The assembly constituency is largely populated by Jats, who number about 50,000, followed the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (40,000), Muslims (20,000), Rajputs (15,000) and Brahmins (10,000).

Despite not having a sizeable representation in population, Jain community has had its candidates winning the seat six times. The incumbent MLA, Congress’s Mevaram Jain, will be completing his second term.

With elections due by the end of this year, the political tug of war between the BJP and the Congress in Rajasthan had, until as recently as January, spilled over into Barmer’s oil fields – the region’s, as also of the state’s, production belt. (The Barmer basin accounts for 20% of the country’s domestic crude production.) The two parties had exchanged communication over Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s move to “lay the stone” for an oil refinery – one that Congress’s then president Sonia Gandhi had already done so in September 2013. With the change in power that year, and BJP’S Vasundhara Raje facing blame for the project not taking off in 2004, the BJP declared that project as “unviable” and announced a “revised” deal, paving way for Modi’s stone-laying ceremony in 2018.

Like elsewhere in Rajasthan, the problems that beset the region includes supply of saline and fluoride-ridden water. Lack of health and proper education facilities are other major issues and both sectors face staff crunch. A medical college was announced in 2012, it is yet to see the light of day.

The constituency also faces road and rail connectivity, and not enough job opportunities means people migrate to other regions, despite the presence of Cairn Oil & Gas and JSW Energy, that have brought significant wealth into this region.

Speaking to Hindustan Times, BJP’S Priyanka Choudhary, the runner-up on this seat in the 2013 elections, accused the Congress MLA of not ensuring any development work in the constituency despite representing it for the past ten years.

She said that if she wins the election (even as her party was yet to announce the list of candidates for the polls), she will prioritise the education sector.

Jain, on his part, said he has fulfilled “all the promises he had made”. He claimed he had ensured completion of mega drinking water project and also sanctioned drinking water schemes for rural areas.

He alleged that the ruling party has “intentionally stalled” the developmental projects in the region.