With the Congress yet to declare 18 candidates in Madhya Pradesh for the Lok Sabha election, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Wednesday stepped up its game to make early gains against the Opposition party.
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Mohan Yadav, who is campaigning for the BJP candidates in Sidhi, Jabalpur and Mandla Lok Sabha constituencies, claimed that the Congress was unable to announce all the tickets as “even senior party leaders are not willing to contest the polls”.
Mr. Yadav’s remarks came on a day when the nomination process for the first phase of the Lok Sabha election began and the BJP’s candidate for Sidhi, Rajesh Mishra, filed his nomination.
While the BJP has fielded candidates from all 29 seats of the State, the Congress has only named candidates on 10 seats.
The remaining names are expected to be announced on Thursday after they are cleared at the party’s Central Election Committee (CEC) meeting in New Delhi, said Congress leaders in Bhopal. The Congress has given the Khajuraho seat to its INDIA alliance partner Samajwadi Party (SP), which has also not named its candidate.
Mr. Yadav said, “We have a two-party system in most of the nation, including Madhya Pradesh and there is always a Congress candidate opposite the BJP candidate. Today, our candidate Rajesh Mishra is filing his nomination with the blessings of Lord Ram but there is no candidate from the Congress. Even big leaders are not ready to fight the polls.”
However, the Congress has declared its candidate from Sidhi — former State Minister Kamleshwar Patel.
Apart from Mr. Yadav, various senior BJP leaders, including his predecessor Shivraj Singh Chouhan, have launched similar remarks on Congress’ candidate selection.
State Congress spokesperson Mithun Ahirwar dismissed suggestions that the BJP attacks over the delay was hurting the morale of party workers.
A source in the M.P. Congress told The Hindu that the party was taking time to finalise names as it was following the “man-to-man marking rule”.
“All of BJP’s candidates are in front of us and our leadership can pick the best candidates against them,” the source said.
The source also accused the BJP of “planting stories in the media” that senior Congress leaders were refusing to contest.
“They twisted Digvijaya Singh ji’s statement when he said that he was already a Rajya Sabha member and would not contest the Lok Sabha election. Similarly they twisted things when Kamal Nath ji said he will not leave Chhindwara to fight from Jabalpur,” he said.
The source also said that names on most seats have been finalised while discussions were on for some prominent seats such as Guna, where Union Minister and former Congressman Jyotiraditya Scindia is BJP’s candidate.
