The party that once removed elderly ministers Babulal Gaur, Sartaj Singh and even denied a Lok Sabha election ticket to Speaker Sumitra Mahajan because of the age factor, has chosen to be flexible as it faces its toughest assembly poll in two decades.
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Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has released its fifth list of candidates for the Madhya Pradesh assembly elections. Notably, sitting MLA Akash Vijayvargiya, son of prominent party figure Kailash Vijayvargiya, has been excluded from the list. BJP has declared 228 out of 230 candidates so far, with only
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Children of ministers and MLAs have been fielded too.
Trusted old warhorses have been recalled to the frontlines. 76-year-old Jayant Malaiya, a former finance minister, has been fielded in Damoh, a seat he had won six times but lost in 2018 to Congress’ Rahul Singh Lodhi.
Former minister for urban administration Maya Singh (74), who was denied a ticket in the 2018 election, has been fielded from Gwalior East, which she won in 2013. The party has also fielded former Speaker Sitasharan Sharma (73) in Hoshangabad. This seat is of great interest among political observers as Sitasharan takes on his brother Girija Shankar Sharma, who has been fielded by Congress. Girija Shankar won the seat in 2008 on a BJP ticket.
The party has also fielded 80-year-old former minister Nagendra Singh from Nagod in Satna district. Though he won the seat in 2003 and 2008, Singh was defeated by Yadvendra Singh of Congress in 2018 by a slim margin.
“All of you should enter the field with full energy and confidence, win and give new impetus to the development of Madhya Pradesh,” said CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan.
Reacting to the lineup, Congress state chief Kamal Nath said: “BJP’s fifth list has made it clear that apart from being leaderless, BJP has also become directionless.”
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BJP has named candidates for 228 seats in four tranches. Two seats — Vidisha and Guna — are on hold. It has dropped 29 sitting legislators in the fifth list. Two ministers, Gauri Shankar Bisen and OPS Bhadoria, have been left out while sports minister Yashodhara Raje has withdrawn, citing ill health.
Two ex-Congress functionaries have also been fielded — Pradeep Jaiswal from Waraseoni and Sachin Birla from Barwah. Jaiswal was minister in the Nath government and had won the 2018 polls as an independent. He recently joined BJP. Birla, an former MLA, had officially joined BJP last week.
While BJP refused to field children of politicians in the first four lists (leaving out even Kailash Vijayvargiya’s MLA son Akash), it broke this rule in the fifth list, fielding Gauri Shankar Bisen’s daughter Mausam from Balaghat — a constituency her father won seven times.
In the party’s second list, BJP denied a ticket to Jalem Singh — brother of Union minister Prahlad Singh Patel — from Narsinghpur to field the Union minister there. But in the fifth list, the party has also given a ticket to BJP minister Vijay Shah’s brother Sanjay Shah from Timarni.