By L S Herdenia
BHOPAL: The BJP has launched its election campaigns by announcing candidates for24 Lok Sabha constituencies in Madhya Pradesh. The party has yet to announce candidates for remaining five constituencies. These five seats include Chhindwara which has been the bastion of Congress since 1980. With only one exception. Kamal Nath has been winning this seat for Congress since 1980. It also includes Indore which is regarded as a highly prestigious seat for BJP.
It is significant to note that the BJP by announcing its candidates has scored over the Congress at a time when Rahul Gandhi is in Madhya Pradesh while continuing his Nyay Yatra.
The party repeated 13 sitting MPs, but dropped 11, including five former MPs who are now cabinet ministers in M.P. and MLAs in the assembly. Four candidates are women sitting MPs Himardri Singh (Shahdol-ST) and Sandhya Rai (Bhind-SC), former state women’s commission chairperson Lata Wankhede and Alirajpur district panchayat president Anita Chouhan.
Chouhan, who was CM for 16.5 years, will return to Vidisha, a seat he represented in Parliament for five terms. And Scindia, after much internal strife, has been picked for Guna, where he was defeated by his former aide, K P Yadav, in 2019. Scindia was with Congress then and it was the first time ever that the Scindia family lost Guna. Yadav seems to have been cast aside after being feted as BJP’s poster boy after his 2019 victory.
Speaking to reporters after the list was released, state BJP president VD Sharma said, “Under Prime minister Narendra Modi’s leadership, BJP has given opportunity to grassroots workers to contest the Lok Sabha election. Four women have been fielded along with nine candidates from backward classes. Proper representation has been given to SC and ST society workers. The list shows a balance between experienced leaders and young faces.”
Chouhan first contested Vidisha in a bypoll in 1991 after former PM Atal Behari Vajpayee left the constituency because he had also won Lucknow. Chouhan last contested a Lok Sabha election in 2004, defeating Congress’s Narmada Prasad Sharma by 2.6 lakh votes. A year later, he would become CM and give up the seat. Sitting MP Ramakant Bhargava has been dropped to make place for Chouhan.
The 13 MPs who have been repeated are Union minister Virendra Khatik (Tikamgarh-SC), VD Sharma (Khajurho), twice MP from Rewa constituency Janardhan Mishra, Himadri Singh (Shahdol-ST), twice MP from Rajgarh Rodmal Nagar, Mahendra Singh Solanki (Dewas), Gyaneshwar Patil (Khandwa), Durgadas Uike (Betul), Gajendra Patel (Khargone-ST), twice MP from Mandsaur Sudhir Gupta and Sandhya Rai (Bhind-SC).
In addition, two MPs who were fielded in the November assembly election in the state and lost – Union minister Faggan Singh Kulaste and Ganesh Singh – have been fielded from Mandla and Satna despite their electoral debacle.
Chouhan’s childhood friend and former mayor of Bhopal, Alok Sharma, will now contest from the state capital. He has been chosen despite his defeat in Assembly Poll. Sharma was first considered as BJP’s Lok Sabha candidate from Bhopal in 2014 when the party asked former chief minister and veteran Kailash Joshi who was twice MP from the seat to step down and give the opportunity to a much younger Alok Sharma. But Joshi’s choice was another Alok – the then BJP office administrator Alok Sanjar.
In the potential names for Morena, the most prominent was former home minister Narrottam Mishra, who lost the assembly election from Datia seat. But the party fielded the lesser known Shiv Mangal Singh Tomar, seeing the predominant Thakur voters of the constituency. Gwalior candidate Bharat Singh Kushwaha is former minister of state for Narmada Development.
To replace former Union minister and twice MP Prahlad Singh Patel in Damoh, the party chose Rahul Singh Lodhi, who joined Congress before the 2018 assembly election and won Damoh but defected in 2020 after the Kamal Nathgovt was toppled. He returned to BJP and contested the Damoh bypoll but was defeated by Congress candidate Ajay Tandon by more than 17,000 votes.
In place of four-time MP Rakesh Singh, who is now PWD minister in the Mohan Yadav cabinet, the party has fielded state BJP secretary Ashish Dubey. In Hoshangabad, it’s former RSS functionary and BJP Kisan Morcha president Darshan Singh Choudhary.
Candidates for five constituencies are yet to be decided, including Chhindwara, Congress leader Kamal Nath’s turf which BJP found impregnable even in 2014 and 2019. Nath’s son Nakul is the lone Congress MP from Madhya Pradesh. It’s clear BJP is still working on a winning strategy for Chhindwara. Candidates for Indore, Ujjain, Balaghat and Dhar yet to be named.
Senior Congress leader and Rajya Sabha member Jairam Ramesh said on Sunday that Rahul Gandhi’s Nyay Yatra is an ideological yatra and it has 5 main pillars – justice for farmers, justice for women, justice for labourers, justice for youth and participatory justice for weaker sections of society in decision making and running the country. Addressing a press conference at Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh. Jairam Ramesh said that the yatra would remain suspended on Sunday as Rahul Gandhi had to leave to participate in a public rally of India bloc of Opposition parties and that it will resume on Monday.
State Congress chief Jitu Patwari said that reception to Rahul Gandhi’s Nyay Yatra in MP has been overwhelming and the issues being raised by Rahul Gandhi in the course of his Nyay Yatra are giving strength to youths, farmers and others vulnerable sections of the society. He thanked the people and party workers of Chambal and Gwalior for the warm reception given to the Nyay Yatra and said it was in keeping with the tradition of soil and water of the region.
BJP MP from Bhopal, Pragya Thakur, who has been dropped from the Lok Sabha candidates’ list, said on Sunday that PM Narendra Modi may not have liked some things she said, but doubled down on her stand. Pragya is known for making polarising remarks. In the run-up to the 2019 polls, she called Nathuram Godse “true patriot”, to which PM Modi said he would never be able to forgive her. (IPA Service)
