Bhopal: Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar Sunday won the Dimani assembly constituency, which falls under his Morena Lok Sabha seat, by a margin of 24,461 votes. He secured 79,137 votes against the 54,676 of his closest rival, Bahujan Samaj Party’s (BSP) Balveer Singh Dandotiya.
Sitting Congress MLA Ravindra Singh Tomar came a distant third with 24,006 votes.
Narendra Tomar is one of the three Union ministers fielded by the BJP in Madhya Pradesh to wrest seats it lost in 2018.
Ravindra had won the seat in the 2020 byelections, held after Union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia broke away from the Congress with 22 loyalist MLAs and joined the BJP, bringing down a 15-month-old Congress government.
Dimani saw a heated contest, with BSP’s Dandotia and AAP’s Surendra Singh Tomar said to have divided the Brahmin and Tomar votes.
Before voting on 17 November, Narendra Singh Tomar found himself in a controversy after videos surfaced online, purportedly showing his son Devendra Pratap Singh Tomar discussing deals worth hundreds of crores.
In two videos, Devendra was seen purportedly discussing the deals, while the third allegedly showed the man on the other side, Jagmandeep Singh, a Canadian resident, claiming that he was the one speaking with Devendra Tomar.
State BJP president V.D. Sharma called the videos “fake” and a “well-planned conspiracy” by the Opposition, but political observers saw them as a blow to the prospects of Narendra Singh Tomar, who is seen as one of the contenders for the chief minister’s chair in the event of a BJP victory.
The election was further marred by controversy when reports and videos from Dimani alleged that Scheduled Caste voters were being stopped from coming out and voting, but the Election Commission denied any such incident.
After the voting concluded, Congress’ Ravindra Tomar accused collector Ankit Asthana and Superintendent of Police Shailendra Singh Chouhan of being biased and under the influence of Narendra Singh Tomar.
Ravindra Tomar accused the district administration of purposefully deploying inadequate security at the polling booths. He lodged a formal complaint with the EC, urging re-polling in 97 polling booths.
(Edited by Sunanda Ranjan)