In MP’s Indore-1, BJP national general secy Kailash Vijayvargiya wins by over 57,000 votes

Vijayvargiya had voiced his surprise at being fielded to fight the polls. Meanwhile, his rival, Congress’s Sanjay Shukla, has repeatedly called him an ‘outsider’.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) general secretary and party candidate from Indore-1 constituency Kailash Vijayvargiya shows his ink-marked finger after casting his vote for the Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections in Indore | ANI

Bhopal: Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya won Indore-1 assembly constituency by a margin of 57,939 votes. The BJP leader, who had voiced his surprise and reluctance at being fielded in the election, secured 1,58,123 votes against the 1,00,184 that his closest rival, Congress’s billionaire candidate Sanjay Shukla, polled.   

The constituency has 3.63 lakh registered voters and has recorded 34,000 first-time voters. It also has a migrant population of over 1 percent. 

Among the BJP’s big guns in this election, Vijayvargiya had told voters in the run-up to the election that he wasn’t running to be just an MLA and that he was poised for a larger role in the party.

This victory comes at a time when the BJP, seemingly to be looking beyond Shivraj Singh Chouhan as its chief ministerial candidate, has fielded seven sitting MPs — including three union ministers. 

‘Outsider’

While campaigning for the election, Congress’s Sanjay Shukla had repeatedly used Vijayvargiya’s image as a national leader to call him an outsider and a ‘neta who will not win’.  

Significantly, the BJP national secretary is a registered voter in the adjoining Indore-2. 

In contrast, Shukla has projected himself to be the “beta” (son) of the constituency.  Addressing reporters earlier in the day, he said he was confident that the Congress will secure 140 seats of the state’s 230 assembly seats.

“We gave 18 years to the BJP in power, but after the Congress government came to power in 2018, the BJP bought the MLAs and since then have done no work, except make recovery,” Shukla told reporters in Bhopal, where he was scheduled to meet Madhya Pradesh Congress chief Kamal Nath. 

On his part, Vijayvargiya, who has bought a house in the assembly constituency to show he was now a resident, had previously called his rival “politically immature”. Brushing aside predictions that it would be a tight contest, he told ThePrint that the people of Indore had always stood behind him. 

“The BJP will form a government not just in Madhya Pradesh but in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh as well,” Vijayvargiya told reporters Saturday. 

(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)