New Delhi and Bhopal: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has fielded Lok Sabha MP from Durg, Vijay Baghel from Chhattisgarh’s Patan constituency, to potentially contest against state chief minister and Congress leader Bhupesh Baghel, who is the incumbent MLA there. Vijay is the chief minister’s nephew.
Baghel’s name was part of a list of candidates for upcoming assembly elections in Chhattisgarh, released by the party Thursday. The party also released a list of candidates for the assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh the same day. Both states are scheduled to hold assembly elections later this year.
The list of names announced Thursday includes candidates for 21 seats in Chhattisgarh and 39 in Madhya Pradesh.
The announcement comes a day after the BJP’s central election committee (CEC) Wednesday reviewed the party’s poll preparations in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. The meeting was chaired by party chief J.P. Nadda and attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as well as Union ministers Rajnath Singh and Amit Shah among other senior leaders.
This is the first time that the party has released a list of candidates months before the elections, and even before the Election Commission has announced the poll dates. Other parties are yet to release their list of candidates.
With just months left for the Chattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh elections, the central leadership of both the BJP and the Congress have been focussing on these states.
In 2018, the BJP had performed poorly in Chhattisgrah, winning only 15 of 90 assembly seats, as against the 68 won by the Congress. The party had emerged as the second-largest party in Madhya Pradesh that year, winning 109 seats, just shy of the Congress’ tally of 114 in the 230-member MP assembly. However, the BJP formed government in MP in 2020, after a defection by a group of Congress MLAs led by senior leader Jyotiraditya Scindia.
According to party sources, during the CEC meet in Delhi, the BJP categorised seats into four categories — A, B, C, and D — for better planning and to focus more on seats that are considered weak and requires for efforts.
‘A’ category seats are those which the party has won in the past polls, while ‘B’ category are those where the BJP has received mixed results — winning at times and losing at others. While ‘C’ category are seats where the BJP’s chances are perceived to be weak, in the ‘D’ category are constituencies where the BJP has never won.
The move is also aimed at investing greater resources in ‘C’ and ‘D’ category seats, the sources added.
The top brass of the BJP is concerned about its chances in both Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh, as internal surveys in the state have shown that the performance of 40 percent of sitting BJP MLAs in Madhya Pradesh was not up to the mark, while the party is likely to win only “30-32 seats” in the 90-member Chhattisgarh assembly.
Following the setback in Karnataka — where the incumbent BJP lost to the Congress earlier this year — the BJP is leaving no stone unturned to ensure a win.
Elections will be held in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Telangana and Mizoram later this year.
A senior BJP leader explained that the early announcing of candidate will give the BJP first-mover advantage.
“It was felt that newer strategies need to be put to use in these elections and which is why names have been announced much in advance. Apart from giving adequate time to the candidates [to prepare], it will also help us identify problem at the local level and address them in time. Voters also will be able to see the commitment of our candidates as they will be able to reach out to them much in advance,” said the senior leader.
A second senior BJP leader explained that the experiment of announcing candidates’s names sooner was deployed by the Congress in Karnataka elections and worked well for the party.
“The aim to to mobilise the cadre and motivate them. This will also give time to the candidates to prepare and connect with the workers, as most of these are tough seats for the party and requires extensive work,” the second leader added.
Speaking to ThePrint BJP national spokesperson R.P. Singh said, “We are more prepared than others and which is why we have already come out with these lists. Other parties are not and that’s why they haven’t.”
The BJP’s first list for Chhattisgarh includes five women, 10 candidates from Scheduled Tribes and one from the Scheduled Castes category. In Madhya Pradesh, the party has so far fielded five women, eight Scheduled Caste candidates and 13 Scheduled Tribes candidates.
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Eye on MP
In the first list of 39 candidates for Madhya Pradesh, the BJP has reposed faith in at least 14 leaders who had lost in the 2018 assembly elections, including former ministers such as Lal Singh Arya, Lalita Yadav and Omprakash Dhurwey.
At the same time, the party has inducted new faces, such as first-time leaders who have been inducted from other parties — the Aam Aadmi Party’s Rajkumar Karrahe who was given a ticket from Lanji in Balaghat.
At least two candidates, including Sarla Vijendra Rawat from Sabalgarh and Neeraj Thakur from Bargi, are second-generation leaders.
According to party sources, the candidates have been picked purely based on the survey results, in which they were considered strong candidates who can give a tough fight to rivals on these seats.
The BJP also seems to have also ironed out its issues with Pritam Singh Lodhi, who was expelled for six years in August last year, owing to his controversial remarks against Brahmins. Lodhi, a leader from the other backward classes (OBC) community from Chambal and a relative of former union minister Uma Bharati, had joined the OBC Mahasabha following his expulsion, met Bhim Army chief Chandrashekar Azad in Gwalior and raised slogans against state BJP president V.D. Sharma.
He has rejoined the party since.
In the first list if candidates from MP, BJP gave Lodhi a ticket from Shivpuri’s Pichhore constituency. Lodhi had also contested from Pichhore in 2013 and 2018 on a BJP ticket, but without any success.
Among the candidates in the first list is also Jyotiraditya Scindia-loyalist, Adal Singh Kansana who was sitting minister for public health engineering (PHE) in the 2018 Congress government and was among 22 MLAs had defected to BJP in 2020, bringing down the Kamal Nath-led Congress government.
Kansana had however lost the Sumawali seat in Morena district during the bypolls. But the BJP has once again decided to give him a ticket from there.
Priyanka Meena, wife of revenue services officer Pradhyuman Singh Meena, who had joined the BJP in February this year, has been declared as the party’s candidate from Guna’s Chachora seat.
According to BJP sources, the party had lost these seats in the past and declaring names in advance will allow the respective candidates to extensively focus and begin work on these seats. On these 39 seats, the party had lost 38 seats to the Congress in 2018 and one to Bahujan Samaj Party.
“Even if we win 10 of these seats, it would be an added bonus,” said a senior state BJP leader, requesting anonymity.
Speaking to the media, state party president, V.D. Sharma said, “In the upcoming assembly elections, BJP in MP has declared the first list of 39 candidates after meeting with senior party leaders in Delhi, under the leadership and guidance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. These candidates will definitely win the assembly elections, but will also play an important role in realising Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of an accomplished India for 2047.”
Sharma added: “We will all get together and emerge victorious in the upcoming assembly elections with an organisational strength right from the booth level to the welfare schemes of the government.”
Claiming Chhattisgarh
Apart from Patan, the BJP has fielded Bhulan Singh Maravi from Premnagar in Chhattisgarh, Laxmi Rajwade from Bhatgaon, Shakuntala Singh Porthe from Pratappur (a seat reserved for the Scheduled Tribes), Sarla Kosaria from Saraipali (a seat reserved for the Scheduled Castes), Alka Chandrakar from Khallari, Gita Ghasi Sahu from Khujji and Maniram Kashyap from Bastar (a Scheduled Tribes seat), among others.
According to first senior BJP leader quoted above, a battery of union ministers will also be deployed in these constituencies to highlight the work done by the BJP government at the centre.
“MP Vijay Baghel is nephew of Bhupesh Baghel and has been fielded from Patan seat. CM Bhupesh Baghel won the election from this seat. In such a situation, the election on this seat will be uncle versus nephew,” said the senior leader.
He added: “He [Vijay] had in fact defeated the CM once from this seat. The strategy in fielding the sitting MP is quite simple: this will ensure that the chief minister will be bound to his seat much more as he will also be required to campaign in other parts of the state too. The will have to give more time to his seat.”
In the 2008 assembly elections, Vijay Baghel had defeated Bhupesh Baghel.
Vijay has also been named by the BJP as in-charge of its manifesto committee.
“BJP has the first mover advantage and it will be ahead in the future too. This is the first time that this has happened. In Chattisgarh almost 25 per cent seats have been announced,” said former state home minister and senior BJP leader Brijmohan Agrawal.
A second leader from Chattisgarh BJP said the move is also aimed at tackling factionalism in the state unit by identifying issues earliest and at the same time resolving them much ahead of elections.
(Edited by Poulomi Banerjee)