Jaswant may contest from Rajasthan

Finance Minister Jaswant Singh visited Jodhpur barely three days before the presentation of the vote-on-account to inaugurate a branch of the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences yesterday.

Accompanied by Union Health Minister Sushma Swaraj and Agriculture Minister Rajnath Singh, Jaswant Singh declined to give a speech citing the passage of the vote on account.

However, his visit has given rise to speculation in Jaipur that he could be considering contesting the Lok Sabha elections, possibly from Chittaurgarh, a constituency he has represented twice in the Lok Sabha in 1991 and 1996.

Top National Democratic Alliance (NDA) sources told Business Standard that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was considering the possibility of fielding either the Finance Minister or his son Manvendra Singh in the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections.

Singh, who had a year to go in the Rajya Sabha, would have no difficulty in being renominated to the Upper House when his term came to an end, given the BJP majority in the Rajasthan Assembly, sources said.

But the party wanted to take advantage of its own popularity in the state to free one seat from the Rajya Sabha, they added.

Within the party Singh was catapulted to the centre-stage after the Hyderabad national executive of the BJP when Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee asked him to present the party's political resolution.

The need to be elected from the Lok Sabha was underlined when pressure from the Rash-triya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) and the fact that he had lost the 1998 Lok Sabha elections, made the Prime Minister withdraw an offer of making him the finance minister.

He had to get a Rajya Sabha nomination to qualify to become a minister.

In 1999, barely months afterwards, the BJP got the Chittaurgarh seat back, with 45-year-old businessman and local boy Shreechand Kripalani beating the Congress.

As the seat is now held by the BJP, finding an alternate seat for Kripalani is going to be the main problem in accommodating Jaswant Singh.

On the other hand, his son Manvendra, who also contested and lost the Barmer Lok Sabha seat, is said to enjoy a secure position in the constituency, which he has been nursing for some time.

He has stitched together complex caste alliances and canvassed in Dalit areas, ensuring the support of the Scheduled Castes.

"The family has to decide who should contest the elections. It has been left to them," said an NDA functionary.

As part of attempts to optimise the BJP's gains in Rajasthan, the state government held a Cabinet meeting yesterday where it was decided that it would seek a vote-on-account for the next four months because ministers and leaders would be preoccupied in campaigning for the Lok Sabha elections; and ministers also had intensive discussions on the Lok Sabha elections.