Barmer:
The contest for the Barmer Lok Sabha seat turned ugly last evening with supporters of the expelled BJP leader,
Jaswant Singh, allegedly attacking the car carrying Sonaram Chowdhury, the party's official candidate, when he was returning from Harsani, a village falling in Sheo assembly segment, after campaigning.
Col (Retd.) Chowdhury blamed supporters of the former union minister for attacking his car while he was on his way back from in Harsani. The front windscreen of the car was damaged in the process. An FIR registered by him named six supporters of the expelled BJP leader. "They (Mr Singh's supporters) have been rattled by my presence,'' he alleged in the FIR.
Sheo, interestingly, is represented in the state assembly by Manvendra, son of Jaswant Singh, who was
dropped from the BJP's national executive last night for defying the diktat forbidding party members for campaigning for the former union minister. Jaswant Singh has entered the race for the Barmer Lok Sabha seat
as an independent, queering the pitch for Col Chowdhury, a recent import from the Congress. (
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Manvendra, 50, had come under the BJP central leadership's scrutiny after it received complaints that he was soliciting votes for his father in the Barmer Lok Sabha constituency.
Following his removal from the national executive, the state unit of the BJP suspended Manvendra from the primary membership of the party and served him a show cause notice for allegations that he defied the party's diktat by campaigning for his father. The state unit has recommended strict action against him by leader of the party in the legislative assembly Vasundhara Raje. (
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Manvendra, who was a journalist and has also been with the territorial army, won the Barmer seat in 2004. He had then defeated Col Chowdhury, the current BJP candidate who was then in the Congress. Manvendra lost the parliamentary election in 2009, after which he contested and won in the Rajasthan assembly polls last year.