Jaipur, April 8 (IANS): The Banswara-Dungarpur Lok Sabha seat is set to witness a fight between the Bharatiya Adivasi Party (BAP) and the BJP, as for the first time in its history, the Congress has decided not to field any candidate from this seat in Rajasthan and has announced an alliance with the tribal party.

The Congress will also not field its candidate in the bye-election to be held on the Bagidora Assembly seat on April 26.

In both these seats, the Congress has announced support to the BAP candidates.

Earlier, there was suspense over this, but the picture became clear on Sunday night when state incharge Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa announced the Congress-BAP alliance from his social media handle.

He wrote, “Congress will support the candidate of the Bharatiya Adivasi Party in the Banswara Lok Sabha elections and for the bye-elections for the Bagidora Assembly seats. Saving the Constitution and democracy of India is our primary aim.”

Three days ago, there were many flip-flops on the last day of filing nominations for the Lok Sabha elections in Banswara seat.

Shortly before the end of the nomination-filing deadline, the Congress decided to make Arjun Bamaniya its candidate, but Bamaniya did not file his nomination and Arvind Damor submitted his nomination as the party’s dummy candidate.

It was not clear why Bamaniya did not submit his nomination.

The BAP made party MLA Rajkumar Rot its candidate from Banswara and the Congress announced its support for him.

The BAP in fact had sought the support of the Congress earlier. Its candidate Rajkumar Rot had posted on social media, “If the Congress leaves the seat as part of our alliance while supporting the BAP on the Banswara-Dungarpur seat, then we and all the residents here will be grateful to the Congress high command and the BJP will bite the dust.”

The BJP has fielded former Congress minister Mahendrajeet Singh Malviya from the Banswara-Dungarpur seat.

Malviya was the sitting MLA of the Congress however, he resigned and left the party to join the BJP last month.

So this seat will now see a tough fight with the BAP’s Rot being fielded against Malviya.

Significantly, this will be the first time after Independence that the Congress will not contest elections on this Lok Sabha seat which is called its stronghold.

There will now be a direct contest between the BJP and the BAP.