In Kota, angry royal & missing airport
Aditi Tandon
Tribune News Service
Kota, December 5
Ijay Raj Singh says he will never forgive the Congress. The erstwhile king of Kota has taken it upon himself to defeat his mother party after being denied the ticket from Ladpura Assembly segment.
The former Kota MP is now busy campaigning for his wife Kalpana Devi, the BJP candidate from the segment he was eyeing. “I was left with no choice but to switch sides. There is something called pride,” Ijay is heard telling locals as he canvasses for the BJP, which currently holds all eight Assembly constituencies of Kota.
But the fight in Ladpura is proving to be interesting with a royal on one side and the wife of a local Congress Muslim leader on the other.
The move to field Gulnaz Guddu, whose husband Naemuddin lost the Ladpura seat twice in a row, hasn’t impressed local Congress workers who privately say fielding a fresh face was the need of the hour.
“We all wanted a change but the Congress high command decided otherwise. Now we are canvassing for Gulnaz Guddu, although a Gujjar face from here would have been better,” says Rajinder Khatana, a Congress supporter in Kota.
The royalty factor is, meanwhile, weighing big on people’s minds with voters harping on “respect for royals” as a key element in Kota elections. “Kalpana Devi is strong here and people understand why former Kota king Ijay Raj ji had to switch sides,” says Rahul Mathur, a local.
Not too far from Ladpura in Kota North and Kota South segments, a major issue is brewing—the absence of an airport in India’s coaching capital where two lakh students arrive annually from across India for long spells of engineering and medical entrance exam trainings.
“Kota has emerged as a hub of coaching... the outstanding demand is of an airport,” says property dealer Shakti Sharma, who sympathises with the Congress having suffered due to GST and demonetisation moves. But there are others who feel the BJP is leading the electoral race in Kota, though Congress is aggressively fighting back.
