Video Editor: Purnendu Pritam
As the Lok Sabha elections gears up for its fourth phase, The Quint met Jodhpur MP Gajendra Singh Shekhawat who is contesting against Rajasthan CM Ashok Gehlot's son, Vaibhav Gehlot, in the polls.
Shekhawat is also the Minister of State for Agriculture in PM Modi's cabinet at the Centre, is known to be a close aide of BJP leader Amit Shah and is a tall Rajput leader in the region.
While the farmers in Jodhpur told The Quint that they reaped no benefits from the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, a flagship agricultural insurance scheme introduced by the Narendra Modi government in 2016, Shekhawat vehemently denied it.
“I vehemently deny. I can give you a list of the farmers and the villages where they have been benefitted.”Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Jodhpur MP
We interviewed locals in the area who said their MP was Ashok Gehlot (chief minister of the Rajasthan), but when we asked Shekhawat what his reaction would be if he was told people weren’t aware that he was the BJP MP of Jodhpur, he said, "I just cannot believe it. My relationship with the people of Jodhpur is so organic," he said.
While he won with a margin of over 4 lakh votes in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, mainly attributed to the Modi wave, we asked him if he thought the 2019 Lok Sabha polls was witnessing the fading of the Modi wave, to which he said, "No, I don't think so” – adding that people now look up to Modi for safety and security.
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