In Barmer, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Kailash Choudhary defeated veteran BJP leader Jaswant Singh’s son Manvendra Singh, who contested on a Congress ticket.

This is the second consecutive defeat for Singh, who after joining Congress last year lost to ex-cm Vasundhara Raje from Jhalarapatan in assembly polls.

BJP had dropped its sitting MP Colonel Sona Ram and fielded ex-MLA Choudhary, who defeated Singh by 3.23 lakh votes. In 2014, Sona Ram after joining BJP had defeated Jaswant Singh with a margin of 87,461 votes, who had received around 4.1 lakh votes as an independent candidate.

Located in western Rajasthan, the Barmer parliamentary constituency shares border with Pakistan - the constituency, spread over Barmer and Jaisalmer districts, comprises eight assembly segments, of which one is reserved for scheduled castes.

Political analyst Narayan Bareth said, “Barmer is traditionally a Congress seat but over a period of time they neglected their traditional vote bank. This Lok Sabha seat did witness polarization and in addition, BJP had an effective campaign strategy, while that of Congress was unorganized.”

First Published: May 24, 2019 12:31 IST