The battle in Nagaur is getting fierce with Mirdha and Beniwal targeting each other in their rallies, sidelining ground issues like a shortage of water.
Nagaur once again braces for a political contest between the Rashtriya Loktantrik Party’s Hanuman Beniwal and the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Jyoti Mirdha.
In 2019, Beniwal from NDA contested against Mirdha, who was a Congress candidate. This time, both have switched sides, as Jyoti Mirdha joined the BJP ahead of the assembly elections last year and is now a BJP candidate, while the RLP has switched to the India bloc. In 2019, Beniwal defeated Mirdha by a margin of approximately 2 lakh votes.
Jyoti Mirdha is the daughter of stalwart Congress leader Nathuram Mirdha, a six-time MP from Nagaur, and was Congress’ lone candidate to win in northern India during the 1977 elections, after an emergency period where even Indira Gandhi too lost. In the caste equation in Nagaur, famous for Makrana marble, Jats are in the majority, while there are also good numbers of Muslim, Rajput, SC, and OBC voters.
The battle in Nagaur has become more of Mirdha vs Beniwal. They are targeting each other through speeches in their rallies sidelining ground issues like a shortage of water, which is a big issue in the constituency. Beniwal is posing himself as a strong Jat leader, rowing on the issue of the farmer’s protest, and dubbing Mirdha as a tourist who visits the constituency only during elections. She is targeting Beniwal’s RLP for flipping sides and betraying the mandate of voters, who voted for Beniwal as NDA candidate in 2019 while he parted ways during the farmer’s protest and misleading them.
Nagaur has eight assembly constituencies, and had the assembly elections last year.
Congress won four seats, the BJP won two seats, and RLP and independent won one seat each.
The main issue in Nagaur is potable water. This issue has been prevailing for a long and no concrete solution has been found for it, said Devendra, a resident of Nagaur city. A water tanker costs around 400 rupees, and if demand increases, especially in summer, the price will also increase, making it difficult. He further added that despite voting for Beniwal, we are deprived of the center government’s ‘Har Ghar Nal se Jal’ scheme, which would end the tanker mafia in the region. Since Nagaur has a mainly agrarian population, Mirdha is also vocal about the schemes of the center government for farmers, such as Kisan Samman Nidhi and the direct benefit transfer scheme for agricultural products.