Bikaner LS seat: Congress fields cousin against Union minister Arjun Meghwal
Jaipur: The contest for the Bikaner Lok Sabha seat is a fight within the family as BJP candidate and Union minister Arjun Ram Meghwal and Congress' Madan Gopal Meghwal are cousins.
While Congress candidate is in the fray for the first time, the BJP candidate Arjun Ram Meghwal will be contesting to retain the seat, which has been the saffron party's stronghold from the last 15 years. Actor Dharmendra had represented the seat in 2004.
Both the candidate have served the government through administrative services.
Arjun Ram entered politics in 2009 after resigning from the IAS whereas Madan Gopal took VRS from IPS before the assembly election in 2018.
Arjun Ram is two consecutive times BJP MP from Bikaner seat. He had defeated Congress's Shankar Pannu with over 3 lakh votes in 2014 Lok Sabha election and considered a heavyweight in the BJP.
He is elder son of my aunt (Mausi) and is also elder to me. We believe in different ideologies. I am a strong Congress worker whereas he is a staunch BJP man. I may be first timer but I am accepting the challenge, Madan Gopal said.
The BJP leader is presently facing infighting within the party as the former minister and BJP veteran Devi Singh Bhati has been opposing his candidature from the seat accusing him of working as an agent of the Congress.
The battle on the seat also gets tougher this time as CPIM has given ticket to a strong candidate Sheopat Ram who fought the election unsuccessfully from Raisingnagar seat.
Caste equation between upper castes which are in sizeable number, and reserved castes too will play a major role on the Lok Sabha seat comprising eight assembly seats of which seven are in Bikaner dstrict and one seat Anupgarh falls in Sriganganagar district.
Presently, BJP hold four Anupgarh, Nokha, Lunkarnsar, and Bikaner east where as Bikaner west, Kolayat and Khajuwala seats are with Congress while Dungargarh seat was grabbed by CPIM in the recent assembly election.
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
