Sanjay Bohra reports:  Former BJP leader Jaswant Singh, who rebelled against the party to contest Lok Sabha election from Barmer, has claimed that Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje was instrumental in the party’s decision to deny him the ticket.  Ms Raje, according to many people in Rajasthan, did it so out of personal animosity between the two leaders. However, others think the decision was part of big change in the BJP’s social engineering under its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi to shift banking on traditional Rajput, Bania, Brahmin votebanks to OBCs. Thus, Ms Raje chose Col. Sonaram as he belongs to the most influential political OBC community in Rajasthan.

The battle between Mr Jaswant Singh and Col. Sonaram or Ms Raje is not about winning the Lok Sabha election. The once sleepy town of Barmer is now buzzing with economic activities thanks to oil and gas discovery a decade ago. Big bucks followed as demand for real estate boomed and the discovery was followed by an announcement that a refinery would be set up in the area.
Just to put things in perspective, the Rajasthan government receives approximately `5,000 crores per annum in sales tax and royalty from the sale of crude oil.

Politicians have purchased land in anticipation of a refinery being built. Land acquisition was a big issue during the Assembly elections, in which Col. Sonaram was a key player as he had opposed the Rajasthan government’s move to shift refinery site from Lilala to Pachpadra. The land in Lilala was to be acquired from farmers, who demanded `1 crore per bigha for land that had no takers a few years ago and was available dirt cheap. If refinery shifts to Pachpadra, it means those who bought hundreds of acres in Lilala, in anticipation of a refinery being built there, now stand to lose big bucks. Besides, who wouldn’t like to control the flow of money through various contracts?