25, mother of two, and an almost giant-killer: Rajasthan Cong’s LS surprise

From being a zila parishad member to contesting an Assembly election in 2023, to getting a Lok Sabha ticket now at the age of just 25 years, Sanjana Jatav’s rise in the electoral arena in Rajasthan has been exponential.

Sanjana’s name figures in the latest list of the Congress candidates for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

Fielded from the Bharatpur seat, she is among the youngest of all candidates announced so far in the state.

Just months ago, she had fought a spirited election for Alwar’s Kathumar Assembly seat, losing to the BJP’s Ramesh Khinchi by just 409 votes. Both Sanjana and her opponent had polled over 79,000 votes in the November 2023 Assembly polls. In the six Assembly elections in Kathumar since 1998, the year she was born, the Congress had won the seat, reserved for Scheduled Castes, thrice — in 1998, 2003 and 2018 — while the BJP too has won it thrice — in 2008, 2013 and 2023.

“It was my first Assembly election. I had no experience, yet people gave me lots of love. What’s missing was just luck, nothing else,” she told The Indian Express.

What has worked in her favour, she says, is that wherever she goes, the people see her as their “daughter” or “bahu”. It also helps that she has a clean image and brings a freshness to the election, she says. “I’m personally in touch with everyone, and they don’t feel I’m a politician or someone different from them,” she says.

It was a combination of factors that propelled her candidature for the Lok Sabha polls. Apart from her spirited fight in the Assembly election, the Congress bigwigs have shied away from contesting the Lok Sabha polls as the BJP had bagged all 25 seats in the state over the past two elections, thereby opening up opportunities for young leaders like