New Delhi: Jaipur’s rural constituency is all set to witness a face-off between two Olympians turned politicians. 

BJP’s Rajyavardhan Rathore is a former Olympian who has won 25 medals in double trap shooting championships and a silver medal in the 2004 Olympics for the same category. He is currently the union minister for state information and broadcasting.

He will be contesting against former Olympic athlete and current Congress MLA from Sadulpur constituency in Rajasthan, Krishna Poonia. She has medalled at the commonwealth games as well as in the Olympics and is also a Padma Shri award recipient.

Poonia has said that the election is a fight between two ideologies and not between two athletes. She added that the focus of her fight would be raising the issues of common man.

She added that the election is for democracy and the previous one had been contested based on one man and his false promises. The 41-year-old will start campaigning from Monday.

Rathore, on the other hand, has already started his campaign and is highlighting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s achievements in the constituency. He had previously won the election in 2014 with a margin for 3,32,896 votes. 

In his campaign he said, "People have seen the work done by the government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Development work done in the last five years is much more than what was done in 50 years”.

He is also campaigning through social media platforms and encouraging youth to participate more in sports. He has also said that parents have become more encouraging in terms of extra-curricular activities.

The rural Lok Sabha seat has 19.33 lakh electorates of which 9.12 lakh of them female and predominantly belong to the Jat community followed by Yadav, Brahmin and SC voters. 

Jaipur Rural is among the 12 Lok Sabha seats which go to polls in the second phase.