Among those dropped when the BJP announced its second list of 31 candidates for the Rajasthan Assembly election on Wednesday, 14 November, was controversial MLA Gyandev Ahuja, who hit the national headlines at the height of the JNU controversy in 2016 for his remarks that thousands of condoms were found on the university campus daily.
Ahuja, who represents Ramgarh in Alwar district in the current Assembly, had reportedly said in 2016 that JNU students take drugs and “perform obscene dances”.
“More than 10,000 butts of cigarettes and 4,000 pieces of beedis are found. 50,000 big and small pieces of bones are found. Two thousand wrappers of chips and namkeen are found, and so are 3,000 used condoms. They commit misdeeds with our sisters and daughters there. And 500 used contraceptive injections are also found.”Gyandev Ahuja on JNU
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Not just this, Ahuja had also courted controversy in the Rakbar Khan lynching case, when he said that ‘gaurakshaks’ would challenge the chargesheet in the court as “it does not say a word” about “cow smugglers” and the policemen charged with dereliction of duty.
“The chargesheet is injustice to those innocents who have been held accused for their only mistake was that they alerted the police and got the cow smugglers arrested”, Ahuja had said.
The MLA had also reportedly labelled the accused in the Pehlu Khan lynching case as “innocent”. In August this year, he also said, that Nehru was not a ‘Pandit’ since he “ate beef and pork”.
3 Ministers Dropped in BJP’s Second List
With the release of the second list, the BJP has so far announced the names of 162 candidates in the 200-member assembly.
The second list of 31 candidates dropped 15 sitting MLAs, including three ministers.
Outgoing ministers Babulal Verma, Rajkumar Rinwa and Dhan Singh Rabat were denied party ticket this election.
Assembly election in Rajasthan will be held on 7 December.
The BJP is facing a strong challenge from a resurgent Congress in the state with the opposition party winning a number of bypolls in the past couple of years.
A number of opinion polls has also given an edge to the Congress but the BJP has insisted that it will be able to repulse the Opposition's challenge.
The saffron party under Vasundhara Raje had won 163 of the 200 assembly seats in the state in 2013, giving the Congress its worst-ever drubbing.
The state has for the past two decades seen the incumbent party losing the Assembly polls.
(With inputs from PTI, DNA and News18.)
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