After backlash, Congress drops Jaipur pick Sunil Sharma | India News
JAIPUR: Days after a controversy erupted over the candidature of Congress‘s Sunil Sharma from the Jaipur Lok Sabha seat, the party on Sunday replaced him with former minister Pratap Singh Khachariyawas as the party’s new nominee from Jaipur.
Sharma’s candidature, despite his reported association with ‘The Jaipur Dialogues’, a platform for “right-thinking people” that frequently indulged in criticising the Congress first family, had triggered surprise and sharp reactions from within the party, including from former Union minister Shashi Tharoor.
Quoting Sharma’s tweet where he had called Tharoor “Rahul Gandhi with a thesaurus he stole from a library on his way out!”, Tharoor had made his surprise over Sharma’s candidature public. “He must have undergone some sort of Pauline epiphany on the road to 24 Akbar! This is just one of several dozen tweets from his handle attacking me,” Tharoor said on social media.
Though Sharma denied being associated with the controversial platform or its anti-Congress content, his candidature also saw a backlash from Congress workers and supporters, who demanded that the party should reconsider its decision to field him from Jaipur.
Sharma’s replacement, Pratap Singh Khachariyawas, a prominent leader of the Congress and former minister in the Ashok Gehlot govt was pressed into service even though it was widely believed that Khachariyawas was not keen to contest. He had lost the 2023 assembly polls to debutant BJP candidate Gopal Sharma.
On Sunday, Congress also nominated Murari Lal Meena, a Sachin Pilot loyalist and the party’s sitting Dausa legislator, to contest from the Dausa Lok Sabha seat. In 2003, Meena contested from Bandikui on a BSP ticket and won the polls. He later joined the Congress and shifted to Dausa, from where he had won the assembly polls twice.
Sharma’s candidature, despite his reported association with ‘The Jaipur Dialogues’, a platform for “right-thinking people” that frequently indulged in criticising the Congress first family, had triggered surprise and sharp reactions from within the party, including from former Union minister Shashi Tharoor.
Quoting Sharma’s tweet where he had called Tharoor “Rahul Gandhi with a thesaurus he stole from a library on his way out!”, Tharoor had made his surprise over Sharma’s candidature public. “He must have undergone some sort of Pauline epiphany on the road to 24 Akbar! This is just one of several dozen tweets from his handle attacking me,” Tharoor said on social media.
Though Sharma denied being associated with the controversial platform or its anti-Congress content, his candidature also saw a backlash from Congress workers and supporters, who demanded that the party should reconsider its decision to field him from Jaipur.
Sharma’s replacement, Pratap Singh Khachariyawas, a prominent leader of the Congress and former minister in the Ashok Gehlot govt was pressed into service even though it was widely believed that Khachariyawas was not keen to contest. He had lost the 2023 assembly polls to debutant BJP candidate Gopal Sharma.
On Sunday, Congress also nominated Murari Lal Meena, a Sachin Pilot loyalist and the party’s sitting Dausa legislator, to contest from the Dausa Lok Sabha seat. In 2003, Meena contested from Bandikui on a BSP ticket and won the polls. He later joined the Congress and shifted to Dausa, from where he had won the assembly polls twice.
