After finally bowing down and telling party veteran LK Advani that he could choose which seat he would like to contest from, the BJP has however refused to relent to senior leader Jaswant Singh's demand that he be given a ticket for the Barmer seat.
In a list of four candidates that the party announced on Friday, the party said that Barmer seat would instead be represented by Sonaram Choudhary, a Congress MP and Jat community leader, who only recently joined the party.
Choudhary, a former colonel in the Indian Army, was a former MP from Barmer. While in the Congress he had spoken out against previous chief minister Ashok Gehlot and after the fall of the Congress government in the state had begun wooing the BJP.
The ball is now in Jaswant Singh's court. PTI
Jaswant Singh, who presently represents Darjeeling in the Lok Sabha, had reportedly insisted on contesting from Barmer and had even threatened to contest as an independent if he was not given the seat.
However, a day after giving party patriarch Advani a choice of picking his seat following a 30 hour long crisis involving Bhopal and Gandhinagar, the BJP seems to have decided not to brook any dissent from any of its other senior leaders and released a list of just four candidates, in which Singh's choice of seat was given away.
The message given out is simple: The verdict of the Central election commission is final. Even with Advani, although he was finally told that he would be given a choice, the fact that he opted for his 'less preferred choice' of Gandhinagar was telling. The 'choice' was only a face saver. There was really no moving away from the party decision.
Jaswant Singh has not commented yet.
Choudhary, a influential Jat community leader and two time member of Parliament, had been elected as an MLA in the 2008 state elections. However, he lost his seat to the BJP in the Rajasthan assembly elections held last year.
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