In BJP’s Mission 25 for Rajasthan, return of Jaswant Singh’s son Manvendra could provide last-minute boost

The son of former Union Finance and Defence Minister Jaswant Singh, Manvendra was elected as an MP for the first time in 2004 from Barmer. However, he lost the seat in 2009. He subsequently became an MLA from the Sheo Assembly segment in 2013 on a BJP ticket.

In 2014, his father Jaswant Singh who was denied a Lok Sabha ticket by the BJP went on to contest as an Independent from Barmer. He lost. Meanwhile, Manvendra was suspended from the BJP for campaigning for his father in that election as against the BJP candidate.

In September 2018, Manvendra left the BJP after saying that the party’s top leadership had failed to “allay his concerns” or “stop the harassment of his supporters at the behest of the party’s state leadership” — a statement seen as an attack on the then CM Vasundhara Raje. At the rally, his supporters had chanted “Kamal ka phool, badi bhool (Lotus is a big mistake) ”.

Singh had also implied that there was a conspiracy by Vasundhara Raje to keep his father out in the 2014 polls.

“In 2014, I got a call from the then CM and now Prime Minister Narendra Modi while elections were on. He said Manvendra ji, we go way back…He said that whatever happened regarding the Barmer (Lok Sabha) ticket was wrong and unfortunate, and that he had nothing to do with it,” Singh said.

“He said it was not in his hands, and that this conspiracy had been hatched by one person from Jaipur and two persons from New Delhi. I don’t have to take any names…,” Singh had said.

After he joined the Congress, the party fielded him from the Jhalrapatan Assembly seat against Raje herself in the 2018 Assembly polls. Expectedly, Manvendra lost the election.

He then contested as a Congress candidate from Barmer in 2019 against the BJP’s Kailash Choudhary and lost.

In November 2023 Assembly elections, he was moved by the Congress away from his traditional Sheo seat – which witnessed a five-way contest – and made to contest from Siwana, also part of the Barmer Lok Sabha segment.