Senior Rashtriya Loktantrik Party (RLP) leader from Barmer, Ummeda Ram Beniwal, a close confidant of party supremo Hanuman Beniwal, resigned from the party and joined the Congress in Jaipur on March 16. Mr. Ram Beniwal’s shift to Congress has put to rest the speculations about the Opposition party’s alliance with the RLP for the Lok Sabha election in Rajasthan.
A member of Barmer Zila Parishad, Mr. Ram Beniwal contested the State Assembly election twice from Baytu constituency as an RLP candidate. He lost to Congress MLA Harish Chaudhary by a thin margin of 910 votes in the 2023 election, though he was considered a prominent face of RLP in the border districts of Barmer and Balotra.
Pradesh Congress Committee president Govind Singh Dotasra welcomed Mr. Ram Beniwal at the party’s State headquarters and said he was a mass leader coming from a farming community and was connected to his roots. “I have full confidence that your arrival will strengthen Congress and help us raise the issues of farmers, Dalits and weaker sections effectively,” he said.
Along with Mr. Ram Beniwal, a former civil servant from Nagaur district, Jassa Ram Chaudhary also joined Congress and brought with him a large number of his supporters as well. He has been promoting education among the youths of the Jat community in the region.
Mr. Ram Beniwal’s shift to Congress has effectively ruled out the possibility of an alliance of the party with the RLP in Rajasthan. RLP chief Mr. Hanuman Beniwal, who won the 2019 Lok Sabha election from Nagaur in an alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party, has been critical of Congress and its leaders, because of which several party leaders were reluctant to hold any alliance talks with him.
While Mr. Hanuman Beniwal was reportedly insisting that his wife contest from the Barmer Lok Sabha seat, Mr. Harish Chaudhary and others had protested against any pact with the RLP. The RLP supremo has since resigned as an MP after being elected an MLA from Nagaur district’s Khinvsar in the 2023 election.
Following a change in the political equations in the Barmer Lok Sabha constituency, the Congress may field Mr. Ram Beniwal as its candidate. The Opposition party has already experimented with the strategy of giving a ticket to a leader of the rival party by declaring Rahul Kaswan as its candidate from Churu after he resigned from the BJP and joined Congress.
Mr. Ram Beniwal said in a post on X that he had resigned from the RLP because of “political reasons” and assured the people of the Barmer region that he would continue to fight to protect the interests of farmers.
The scope for Congress’s alliance with Bharat Adivasi Party (BAP) in southern Rajasthan has also ended with the latter fielding its founder-member and Chorasi MLA Rajkumar Roat as its candidate from Banswara-Dungarpur seat. The BJP has fielded Congress turncoat and former Minister Mahendrajeet Singh Malviya in the constituency.
Meanwhile, former Congress MP from Alwar, Karan Singh Yadav, and several other party leaders, including Pratap Poonia, Param Navdeep, Suresh Tak and Ram Lal Meghwal, joined the BJP in Jaipur on Saturday. Mr. Yadav resigned from Congress’s primary membership on Friday after claiming that party leader Jitendra Singh had denied him a Lok Sabha ticket. The Congress has fielded sitting Mundawar MLA Lalit Yadav as its candidate from Alwar.
