The Indian Express : Feb 11, 2019, 03:19 PM
History has usually favoured Rajasthan ruling party in Lok Sabha polls, but it has not been without exception. Now with Lok Sabha polls approaching, Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and Deputy CM Sachin Pilot have hit the ground running to implement the Congress manifesto, while the BJP is working on strategies to check a resurgent Congress.Generally, the ruling party has retained the advantage. The last exception was two decades ago, when the Congress won 18 of 25 seats in the 1998 Lok Sabha elections, followed by a sweeping 153 of 200 seats in the Assembly elections the same year, but failed to translate these in the 1999 Lok Sabha elections, winning just 9 of the 25 seats.In the last pair of polls, the Congress plummeted to 21 Assembly seats in 2013, its lowest since Independence, followed by the BJP sweeping all 25 Lok Sabha seats in 2014.On farmers and youth. Within two days of taking oath, Chief Minister Gehlot announced a farm loan waiver up to Rs 2 lakh, compared to the outgoing Vasundhara Raje government’s waiver up to Rs 50,000. This will cost the government an estimated Rs 18,000 crore. On February 7, Pilot launched the waiver.